


Homeward Bound

by GokuGirl



Series: The Pathway to Destiny [1]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-09-14
Updated: 2002-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-11 06:25:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4424864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GokuGirl/pseuds/GokuGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world was not a happy place, not anymore. Crime and deperession had hit an all time high even while education and health hit an all time low. Son Gohan often wondered what had happened to everyone. Did they all just decide to become this way or was something else entirely behind the general hopelessness of the world? Maybe the answer would ease the constant loneliness caused by the departure of his father. Or maybe it would lead him on an adventure the likes of which he had never known before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Things had been pretty bad for Gohan ever since his parents divorced on the grounds of 'irreconcilable differences' and his mother got custody of him. It wasn't as if Son ChiChi was a bad mother, oh no she was far from it. It was just a little matter of her going back to school for her doctorate degree to teach Literature in the largest university they had on Chikyuu. She was so busy that she had no time for him and Gohan was often left alone.

No, it wasn't as if ChiChi was a bad mother; it was just that she focused on one single thing and neglected the rest. The house they lived in, one that she had purchased, was often cleaned by the son instead of the mother. Gohan scrubbed and dusted the house, cooked the meals, and handled the bills. ChiChi had made sure that her son was as intelligent as possible and those skills were coming in handy to keep the bill collectors from calling. All of their money was going toward the college classes that would enable his mother to get a better job and improve their lifestyle. ' _That's in the future, though_ ,' Gohan sighed mentally as he poured the dirty water from the bucket outside the back door. ' _Right now I just want my kaasan back._ '

Their house was modest, five rooms on one level. It was one that looked remarkably like two others right next door on either side. Gohan considered them "cookie-cutter houses". After placing the mop and the bucket in the utility closet, he went in search of his mother who he hadn't seen in quite some time. The last place he saw her was the living room where she was musing over something on her laptop. The small boy assumed that it was a report for class and chose not to bother her.

Gohan remembered happier times when both his mother and his father had been around, before they constantly screamed at each other. He thought that everything was perfect; just he, his parents and sometimes his best friend and her father. They used to take him to the park on weekends and let him play with the other children. That all ended when he started school.

"I want him to never have to want for anything, Goku!" His mother had always exclaimed when defending her decisions. "Gohan can only achieve that by high grades. If he studies now there's no limit to what he can do." Gohan hated his daily lessons but tolerated them only because if he satisfied his mother, she spent time with him.

His father would do the same thing he always did: look at ChiChi as if she were losing her mind. "He's four years old!"

"So what? The earlier they start, the higher they achieve."

That had been what he did every day as soon as he came home from school for the next three years. He and Videl had drifted apart so much that he didn't know how he would salvage their friendship. He would see her outside sometimes, skipping rope or playing tag, and would greet her from an open window. She would always wave back but he knew as soon as he backed out of sight she forgot him very easily. ' _It's my fault,_ ' he thought miserably as he stood in front of the window and watched the children play, ' _I never gave her any reason to remain friends with me._ ' The thought ran rampant through his mind, making him ever more depressed than he already was. He wished that once, just once, someone would tell him otherwise but he didn't dare voice his thoughts to his mother. She didn't have time to hear them.

"Gohan?" He heard his mother call out. A tiny glimmer of hope rose in his heart as he made his way as fast as possible to the living room. ChiChi typed still, her head bowed, and only looked at him briefly to give him a piece of paper.

"What's this, Kaasan?" he asked, peering at the words. His dark eyebrows rose when he recognized it. ' _A shopping list. She wants me to go shopping._ ' He silently wondered why he even hoped she had been calling him for something else.

"Can you go to the store for me, honey?" she asked, pausing to hand him the money. "We're all out of several things."

Gohan forced a smile on his face and hoped that it appeared sincere. "Sure, Kaasan. No problem." ' _Some people would think that sending a seven-year-old shopping by himself was odd._ ' He snorted. Not his kaasan.

"That's my good little boy." She smiled and returned to her work. "Don't take too long. I get worried with you out there all by yourself."

A rush of anger rose in Gohan, something so unfamiliar that it left him pondering. He hardly ever got angry at anything or anyone but his mother had just crossed a line. How could she claim to get worried when she had barely acknowledged his existence for so long? The anger was quickly replaced by pain. Raw, emotional pain. Some children were lucky enough to receive loving parents that always made time for them. He had been unlucky enough to receive ChiChi. Was he being punished for something that he had done in a past life or was it just bad fortune? ' _Stop thinking that way,_ ' Gohan mentally scolded himself. ' _Some kids don't have any parents at all. You're *very* fortunate._ ' He told himself that and tried to believe it, but the emotional scarring ran too deep. He knew that he did have one parent who cared a lot about him, one parent that would kill himself before he let anything happen to his son. Unfortunately his father lived too far away for him to be with and the courts would not let Goku have custody of his son. Gohan had no idea why not and thought that it was evil of the judge to rule the way he did but that's just the way things were.

Gohan often dreamed of a day when he was happy and loved. He wasn't too clear on many of the details but he knew that his father was there, laughing, and so was he. His mother was not there but she had been, once. Over the years, Gohan's mind slowly erased her from the sharp image that she had once been into a hazy blur into finally nothing. ChiChi wasn't in his dream, but her son didn't mind at all.

The sun's warmth washed over him as his father swung him around in his arms; he always remembered that detail. It was always sunny and warm with a cloudless blue sky above and white sand below. They had done lots of fun things that day, but Gohan could only remember being held in his father's arms and feeling safe, happy, and loved. He experienced that feeling a lot before the divorce and it was the main thing he missed after his father moved away. The trips were nice and so were the gifts, but nothing could replace the feeling of his father's love. ChiChi had taken that away from him, and nothing she could do would earn his forgiveness.

He looked at his mother's fingers moving rapidly along the computer keyboard and suddenly hated the sound of the keys. He gazed at his mother's face and suddenly hated the single-minded determination he saw there. His dark eyes swept around the house and suddenly he hated the place to which he was constantly confined. Gohan felt as if he had to get out of the house and no short trip to the store was going to work. He was going in search for the love that had been stolen from him. He was going to find his father and nothing -- not fear, not the police, not his mother -- could stop him from achieving his goal. Gohan had a healthy portion of that fierce determination that drove his mother forward and a quick, intelligent mind on top of it. He had calculated the risks and the benefits, finding only that the benefits greatly overbalanced the risks. ' _When such a thing happens,_ ' Gohan mused, ' _the task becomes a possibility._ '

And the word "possible" usually equaled "go for it!" in his young mind.


	2. It Takes Two

Gohan's hand was steady as he carefully wrote the note to his mother, the one that he said goodbye to her in. He was proud of himself for not shedding a single tear but then, a moment later, began to worry when he realized that he had no emotion within him at all. Gohan was sure that wasn't a good thing, small boys should feel *something* as they left their mother for the first time in their life, shouldn't they? Not the empty pit of nothingness that sat in his heart as he signed his name. He let his brain puzzle over that for a moment and nodded slightly to himself when he decided to just wait for a while. The emotion would come sooner or later.

He slowly packed up some things, taking time to only select clothes that were nice and warm. A few books went in next as well as plenty of extra changes of underwear and socks. Gohan blushed faintly as he remembered his mother's words about always wearing clean underwear. You never knew who would see you in it. The final thing that went into his duffle bag was a small stuffed purple dragon that he had named Icarus. He knew that a boy his age shouldn't still be playing with stuffed toys but Icarus comforted him when things got rough. He never asked him to go away and he always listened to his words. Gohan hugged him briefly before setting him on top of his clothes. He had a feeling that he would be needing all of the comfort that he could get. Making a journey was never an easy thing to do but doing it alone was even worse. No companionship, no one to talk to... Gohan quickly got the money he had saved over the past few months and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans where the grocery money rested. After he found his father he would send money to replace what he had taken from his mother. Hopefully she would understand.

The house was quiet as he passed through it save for the clacking of the computer keys. He opened the front door slowly, taking extra time to memorize every detail of the familiar wood, and closed it behind him with a quiet click. He made it easily away from his yard and down the street and smiled for the first time in a while as he settled into a comfortable walking pace. It felt good to finally get out of that house.

Gohan looked at the world around him with curious eyes. He had often heard his mother describe the city that they lived in as a "bleak place full of despair" but she always saw it through the jaded eyes of an adult. A child only saw the many fun places that you could go and the many fun things that you could do; everything else was often ignored.

One of Gohan's favorite things to do was read, and there were many stories about the way Chikyuu used to be. He read about the heroes, the inventions, the romance and wondered why things didn't stay that way. ' _Maybe people got tired of that and decided to change._ ' But that didn't explain why things changed for the worse and not the better. They had technology and knowledge to make their lives easier, but if the people weren't happy first, they wouldn't do anything to make their world a better place. Gohan felt that happiness was the key to everything and the simplest thing that you could achieve. Without it, or contentment, nothing could be accomplished.

There was a bus stop at the edge of the neighborhood that he lived in that would take him into the heart of the city. Gohan figured he had just enough money for several local bus trips, meals, and one bus ticket to take him across the country but after that he would just have to find a way to earn money.

"Where do I get off to reach the bus station, sir?" Gohan asked the driver politely as he boarded. The man tapped a small sign next to him that read 'Do not talk to driver" and refused to speak. Sighing, he paid his fare and found a seat in the back next to an old woman.

"Are you traveling alone?" she asked him in curiosity and smiled when he nodded. "You're such a mature young man. You're mother should be proud."

He thought of the way she had been treating him and snorted softly. "I guess so." Then he turned his head away and absently listened to the conversation of the other passengers, the rumbling of the engine, and the noise of the traffic on the street. He felt the woman's eyes on him, though, and finally turned back to her. "Can you tell me how to get to the bus station? I'm going to see my father and I've never really ridden a public bus before." A sad look combined with the slightly frightened tone he was speaking in touched her heart.

"I'll take you there myself, okay?" she said. "Maybe we could stop for something to eat and you can tell me all about yourself."

Gohan's eyes lit up at the prospect of a free meal. She was a nice lady, though, and he probably wouldn't see her again after he left the city. It couldn't hurt to spend a little more time with her.

"I've lived on the east side of town my entire life," she was saying as they walked down the crowded street. She expertly wove between the people and Gohan figured that she came downtown often. "Every day I would get up and go off to work, never once thinking that old Western Capital was gettin' a little dull." She smiled at him, her gray eyes twinkling. "There's plenty to see if you know where to look."

"My name's Gohan," he blurted out suddenly without really thinking about it. "What's yours?"

"It's Ella, dear. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

The walk took them past places that Gohan had never seen before. Flower shops, cafés, book stores, antique shops... His eyes tried to take in as much of the sights as he could in a very small space of time. Ella led him to a small restaurant on a corner and they took a booth in the back.

"I never knew Western Capital was so large!" he said in wonder, his eyes still very wide. Ella chuckled as she signaled a waitress over.

"Oh dear, yes. We live in one of the largest cities in the world and a lot of wonderful things can be found practically right in your own backyard."

Gohan took the menu he had been handed but stared at it, not really seeing the print. It was sort of sad that he'd lived in a city his entire life and never seen the entire thing but it was even sadder to discover something so wonderful when he wouldn't ever be able to see it again. Sort of like unwrapping a Christmas present only to have your parents take it back to the store the very next day. Unfair; that's what it was.

There was a sinking feeling in his stomach and Gohan decided that he had lost his appetite. Eating now, while the food was free, was too good a chance to pass up, though, so he ordered a cheeseburger, small fries, and a coke just to fill his stomach and prepare it for the long stretch of not-so-filling meals ahead. Ella chatted about all sorts of things: her family, the weather, his maturity and kept him from the miserable pit that his mind often played in. Gohan was so used to being unhappy, feeling anything otherwise was completely foreign to him. He opened his heart to her and was both surprised and pleased when the gesture was returned with fervor. ' _Why am I surprised that anyone wants to talk to me? All people are *not* like kaasan. She's in the minority._ ' His mind continued to say that but his heart refused to believe it. He had just been hurt too many times.

"Gohan? Is everything alright?" Ella asked with concern. "You don't look too well all of a sudden."

"It's nothing," he said weakly. "I'm fine." He was saved from further reassuring her of his well-being by the arrival of their food. Actually, that was a mixed blessing in itself seeing as his stomach refused to behave but he would manage. He had to.

He ate slowly, trying to delay the eventual ending of the meal. The mere thought of going out into the world alone frightened him and he wished that there was someone to take with him. Ella, though kind, would not understand why he had to worry his mother and find his father. At least he didn't *think* that she would understand. He wasn't running away, not exactly. Most of the runaways in the books he had read and the television shows he had watched had no final destination and had been doomed to aimless wandering around whatever city they happened to find themselves in. He had a plan and that made him different from all of the others before him.

The older woman placed her fork and knife onto the plate, full at last, and began an impromptu question-and-answer session. "Where are you headed off to?"

"Do you ever get lonely?" Gohan asked his dining partner, leading up to the answer of her earlier question.

Ella was startled for a moment before answering his question. "Everyone does some time, dear. It's a part of life."

Nodding, he began to fiddle with the salt-and-pepper shakers, carefully avoiding her eyes. "Have you ever been so lonely that spending time with others feels strange to you?"

Properly worried at what direction his questioning was heading off to, Ella placed her hands on top of his and focused on the boy's eyes. "Gohan..."

"Silence becomes your constant companion," he went on as if not hearing her speak, "and you try to find friends wherever you can. You don't care *who* they are but only hope that they don't go away and leave you alone again." He looked up at her. "I only had one true friend, Ella, and he was the best. Someone," he said this bitterly, "sent him away from me and I've been alone ever since."

"Were you close?" she asked in a soft voice, her heart aching for the sad little boy.

"My tousan and I were *very* close," he blinked as if coming out from a trance and tears slowly began to trace paths down his cheeks. It had been the first time he allowed himself to cry in a very long time. "I miss him."

She held his hands within her own, trying to convey without words her sympathy. After a short while, Gohan's tears subsided and he was left only with the task of wiping his face and blowing his nose. "Did your parents divorce, dear?"

He nodded and studied the table. "Kaasan doesn't allow tousan to visit me. She says that he's a bad influence."

Ella could think of many things that a mother wouldn't want her son exposed to. "What-"

"He's not a bad person, Ella," he said, knowing where her thoughts were headed. "Kaasan's overprotective and only wants to make me study. Tousan liked to take me places and spend time with me having fun. She didn't like that."

"Ah." The woman smiled. "Gohan, I think your mother was jealous."

He blinked at her in shock. "Excuse me?"

"Oh yes. Your studies are what links you to your mother, you see, and when you decided to spend more time playing she felt that she'd lost you. While I don't approve of her separating you from your father, I do understand why she did it."

Gohan thought about what she said for a moment and smiled slightly. "That makes sense. I've never thought of it that way before."

"You should always try to see things from different perspectives, dear. It gives you a better view of things."

"You're a good friend, Ella," he smiled happily at her. "Arigatou."

Darkness was just falling when the two finally left the restaurant. The number of people and cars on the street had lessened greatly, most of them going home to have dinner with their families. The few people that did remain, however, smiled at the pair thinking that the older woman had a very precious grandson.

"You're going to see your father, aren't you?" Ella asked the boy. He nodded and a determined look appeared on his face.

"I've made up my mind and nothing will change it."

"Whoa, dear," she said in a soothing voice. "I'm not trying to stop you. I was just curious." Gohan exhaled and felt the small knot in his stomach loosen. "I wish you the best of luck."

The station was hot, crowded, and *very* noisy. Gohan's brow creased as he tried vainly to block everyone else out and wait in line to purchase his ticket. It was next to impossible between the lady and her baby in front of him, and the two toddlers behind that kept poking him in the back. Gohan swallowed his misery and tried to take his mind off things by remembering the good times he had shared with his father. It helped pass the time and that was great.

The ticket wasn't cheap and Gohan had to spend most of his money purchasing it. Ella offered to go at least half but he refused. He already owed the woman so much, any more would make him feel bad. He was left with just enough for two or three more meals and sighed.

"Don't hesitate to call me any time, dear," Ella said as she quickly wrote down her phone number. "I want to hear from you. The world is often too cruel, Gohan. Please don't do anything without thoroughly thinking it through first."

"I won't," he assured as he gave her a hug. "I'll call you as soon as I make it there." He boarded the bus to Tokyo along with his fellow passengers, but not without a final look back to the woman who had given him more than she could ever know. The frigid loneliness that had settled in his soul was slowly subsiding and Gohan decided that it felt quite good.

***

Just when he thought his luck was starting to turn around, Gohan found that he the only seat that remained was next to the woman with the bawling baby. She barely spared him a glance and continued trying to quiet the child but nothing seemed to work. After ten minutes of this Gohan was ready to try anything to get the infant to be quiet and offered to take her from the woman. She stared at him for a moment before handing the girl over, apparently happy that someone else was taking a turn. He cradled the baby for a moment, the way he had seen her mother do it, and began to sing and rock her slowly. The words came haltingly, a song from his early childhood, and the lyrics brought with them memories of warmth and love. Slowly the baby's cries subsided and her eyes began to close. Both Gohan and her mother smiled when she, at last, fell asleep.

"You're so good with babies," the woman whispered as she took the now peaceful infant. "Do you have a little brother or sister at home?"

He shook his head and blushed slightly at her complement. "No, ma'am. I wish that I did though." He was jarred slightly as the bus hit a bump in the road and was startled when he was jostled even more violently. Knowing that the tremors he felt running up his legs where they rested against the floor of bus couldn't be anything good, Gohan exchanged glances with the woman sitting next to him and wondered what was going on. The driver began to cut his speed and pulled over to the shoulder. Just as he was getting up examine the bus, the windshield suddenly shattered in an explosion of glass and a choked cry came from the driver. He staggered for a few slight steps and fell over clutching at his throat. Gohan didn't remember moving, he only knew that he was suddenly kneeling next to the man and checking his pulse the way he had seen people do on television. It only took a few seconds to figure out that he was dead. The arrow in his throat further confirmed things.

The whispers of the passengers behind him caught his attention just as he realized that it wasn't safe to remain where they were. Several people had come forward to join him before the driver and all were shaking their heads at the horror of a senseless murder. Gohan took a deep breath to calm himself when the initial shock wore off and thought frantically about what to do. Nothing came to mind.

"Who would do this?" a man asked as he examined the dark green-tipped feathers that decorated the end of the arrow shaft. "Who would use a bow to kill someone when you could use a gun?"

The boy's heart stopped for a very brief moment as he recognized the arrow itself. A very rough plan began to form in his mind, one that was extremely risky, but the risks were greater if they stayed. Looking around at the people to see their reactions, he began to tell them about who the arrow belonged to.

"I saw him last week on "World's Most Wanted"," he heart began to hammer wildly as he thought of the man in question. He was scum of the worst sort, usually preferring to attack his victims and leave them afraid for a while before coming back for them. He and his band of cutthroats, thieves, thugs, and murderers were into slavery and many of those people they captured were sold off in secret markets. This was one of the many things the people of the world had sunken to, but Gohan knew that most simply did it to survive. "We have to get out of here before he comes back, it's our only chance."

"What are you going on about, boy?" the same man questioned him. "You look a bit pale..."

"He's going to come back for us and we'll get sold into slavery!" He barely kept panic out of his voice, instead choosing on a tone that he hoped would convince the people. Gohan moved to the back of the bus, choosing one of the rear emergency windows to open. "We can't go out the front, people are watching. We should split up, some going out the window on the other side. That way at least some of us have a chance at surviving." No one moved an inch and his patience broke. "Do you all want your freedom and rights taken away from you?" his voice rose in a combination of fear and anger. "We have to go *now*!"

At last, a single boy with pale blond hair and blue eyes stepped forward and joined him at the window. "I believe you," he said. "I remember him too." The rest of the passengers also began to come forward, an adult passing through the window first to take the children. The sound of engines startled them and they all began to work faster at an unspoken command. When at last everyone was off the bus except Gohan and the boy, the two of them climbed through the window, dropping to the ground with childish ease. Then they began to run, the dark trees of the forest coming closer and closer, feeling as if the hounds of hell were on their heels. Gohan heard the sound of male voices behind them and put on an extra burst of speed, hoping that the other boy could keep up.

"We need to stay together!" Gohan heard him shout over the rushing of the wind in his ears. "Two are better than one, right?"

Just as the other passengers were coming into view, Gohan saw the blond boy go down and had a brief moment to wonder about what could be wrong before a sharp, burning pain suddenly shot from his neck outward through his body. It made his arms and legs feel numb and his body grow heavy. He had a moment to wonder if the other boy was okay before he felt himself falling forward and everything went dark.


	3. The Criminal Element

ChiChi stretched after she saved her work, relieved that her paper was completed. She had spent hours on it, researching, prewriting, and revising until she could finally say that it was the best that it was possibly going to get. In fact, there was no other day in her life that even came close to comparing except for the day of Gohan's birth. It had been a hectic, stressful day, but it had been definitely a great one.

She remembered the moment the nurse had placed the tiny, bawling bundle into her arms. A smile of wonder had spread across her face, drawing a similar expression from Goku who stood nearby. That smile vanished, though, when she had noticed the furry brown appendage attached to the small of his back.

"Is that a tail?!" she has asked incredulously, not really believing what she was seeing.

"Yes ChiChi, it is," the doctor answered, her eyes not missing a thing. "I assume that you weren't expecting it."

ChiChi laughed at the memory though it had been far from funny then. After several minutes of worrying about her newborn, Goku had told her that he himself had been born with a tail. He considered it only a weird trait like webbed toes. She had been very relieved, to say the least, and had it surgically removed. No one would call her son a weirdo, not if she could help it. ChiChi tried her best to see that her son lived a healthy, productive life and it was paying off. Gohan was a bright, well-mannered boy who could reach for the stars if he continued to remain serious about his schoolwork. She knew that forbidding his father to see him had made him upset, but someday, when he had solved world hunger or cured every illness known to mankind, he would thank her for caring.

That reminded her, he hadn't come home from the store yet. A worried frown appeared on her face for a moment before realizing that he must have come inside without her noticing. Gohan was a very quiet boy.

ChiChi went into his room, intending on taking him out for ice cream in celebration of her finishing her paper and stopped cold when she saw the disarray that his room was in. Gohan was very neat, he would never just leave his things lying around.

Fear and worry swirled in her stomach, making it knot up in reaction. She found the single sheet of paper lying on the bed and read it quickly. Her face paled and the note fell from suddenly nerveless fingers and fell upon the floor. What had she done to deserve this? Did Gohan hate her that much? The words tumbled around inside of her brain, annoying her as she tried to find hidden meaning in his writing.

_Kaasan_

_It's not my place to judge you so I do not. I will leave that to Enma-sama. Instead I will simply tell you that my tolerance for that atmosphere has reached its limit and that I am moving away. Please don't try to find me, I'll return someday. Until then sayonara and be well._

_Gohan_

***

The first thing Gohan noticed as he came to was that the road was bumpy, *very* bumpy. It jostled him against the metal floor of the van he was riding in, making his body ache all over. He raised his head slowly, observing silently the other kidnapped children, and saw that not only was the blond boy there but three other children as well. There were no adults. He slowly pushed himself upward, wincing at the slight pain that caused, and leaned back against the side of the van. His neck didn't hurt that bad anymore, it was a dull ache that he could ignore. Gohan made his way over to his new friend and looked him over to see if everything is okay.

"How do you feel, uh," Gohan asked, a little embarrassed that he didn't even know his name. The other boy smiled and held out his hand in a formal greeting.

"It's Colby. Nice to meet you-" He raised one pale eyebrow.

"Gohan."

"Nice to meet you, Gohan." His eyes took in his surroundings for a moment before he sighed. "We're in some trouble, aren't we? This doesn't look good."

"Those men scare me," Gohan admitted, not really sure why it didn't bother him to say that to a relative stranger. Maybe it was the fact that they were both in the same horrible situation. The other children began to stir, two younger than they were, and their high-pitched cries echoed in the small space.

Colby looked startled, not really knowing what to do, but Gohan went over and talked quietly with the young boy and girl telling them that things were going to work themselves out. The blond boy, only a year older than Gohan himself, was left with the remaining girl who sat scowling in the corner, her arms wrapped around her legs.

"What's your name?" he asked her, trying to wipe the angry look from her face. She only glared at him. "I only want to be your friend. Why be hostile towards each other? There are enough bad guys out there to do that for us."

She exhaled and her expression softened. "I'm Rosalyn. You're Colby and he's Gohan."

He blinked in surprise and a very comical expression came over his face. "How do you know our names?"

She laughed softly and her green eyes sparkled slightly. "I heard you two talking over there. I can't read minds or anything."

"Are we ever going to be free again?" They heard a small voice asked Gohan. Rosalyn and Colby moved over to sit by them and see how the older boy was going to handle things. Gohan felt that he should tell the truth.

"I don't know, Xavier. I hope so."

All five felt the van began to slow down and then completely stop. Rosalyn, the closest to the door, tried to open it and found that it was locked. She sighed and pushed her bright red hair back from her face and continued to try, though she had a feeling that it was useless.

"We need to be ready to attack them when the doors open," Colby whispered, getting an idea. "Then we can run away."

"Where will we go?" Xavier asked with a sniffle. "Aren't there wild animals out there that eat kids?"

"I don't know," Gohan replied. "But we still have to try." Rosalyn suddenly moved backward away from the door as it opened and was the first to launch herself at their capturers. She was stopped in mid-motion and yanked outside with a startled yell that was suddenly cut off. The twins, Xavier and Xaviera, screeched in terror and grabbed Gohan as if he could protect them from the bad people outside. The double doors of the van opened wider, displaying two large bodies outlined against by the light of the moon, and hands reached in and tried to grab the children.

"Let me go!" Xaviera shouted as she struggled in the man's grip. She bit down hard on one of his hands and he howled in pain. The other three heard him growl and had barely time to blink before he hit the little girl, causing her to moan in pain. Gohan felt hot anger rise within himself and barely kept Xavier from running to his sister's side. That man would only hurt him too.

"If you don't want to be hurt you'll come along quietly," he said to the three boys. Gohan decided to just go along with things, see what happened next. He exchanged glances with Colby, who nodded, and the exited the back of the van into dark woods. The larger man took the lead while the shorter one prodded them along from behind along a barely discernible path. Small rocks jutted upward from the earth, hurting their feet as they walked along. The three of them didn't dare complain, though, not wanting to experience what the girls had.

"I can't begin to tell you how much this sucks," Colby whispered in an annoyed tone, bringing a faint smile to Gohan's face despite their situation. "By now I could be-" He cut himself off, falling silent.

Gohan didn't miss a beat. "By now you could be what?"

"Hush you little brats!" The shorter man hissed at them as they halted before a large tree that was at least ten-feet feet in diameter. The large man stuck a card into a small space in the wood and a panel slid over to display a keypad. He punched in a few numbers and waited for a brief moment. The panel slid closed with a soft sound and a one large enough for two people to walk abreast through slid open, revealing a small chamber that Gohan recognized as an elevator. The seven of them entered, the door closing behind them, and the car began to lower itself into the ground.

Gohan couldn't stand the silence that had settled over the group and decided to do something about it. He knew that it probably wasn't very smart seeing as the two men looked very rough and mean in the dim light from above but never hurt to try. Usually. This could be one of those times he was better off keeping his mouth shut.

"What's your name?" he asked the nearest man, the short one. The grunt he received didn't discourage him. "I'm Gohan." He waited a moment and then...

Ah.

"Aldric," was the reply. Gohan smiled at him and repeated his question to the other man.

"Pete. Look kid, why do you care what our names are? Shouldn't you be too busy being afraid?"

"If I was afraid would you let me go?" He got snorts for responses. "I didn't think so. So, why waste my time?"

"You're one strange kid."

Gohan just beamed at him. "Thanks!" The two men looked at him as if he didn't have all of his senses while Colby snickered quietly. He knew what his new friend was doing, throwing the kidnappers off with kindness. Bad guys never expected their victims to be kind to them. He just might try it too.

Rosalyn moaned slightly as she came to, muttering something about a being hit by a bus. A green eye cracked open and regarded the three boys behind her quietly from her position over Pete's shoulder right before biting down hard on his ear. He screamed and the elevator doors opened into a dimly lit hallway.

With guards holding spears there waiting for them.

Colby threw out a plan he had been creating while Pete was yelling in pain figuring that it was pretty useless now. "Damn."

"What are they gonna do now?" Xavier asked as he clutched Gohan's hand tighter. "Can we get away?"

"Probably not," the older boy sighed as he looked sideways to the new set of bad guys. They surrounded them on every side, making sure they headed directly down the hall. "I just should have stayed home today. Kaasan and I could have worked something out."

"I'm glad *I* didn't stay home," Colby said with a dark expression. "Any place is better than there. Even Hell."

Gohan opened his mouth to question him but Rosalyn beat him to it. "How can you say that?! Here were are, God knows where, being herded along like cattle!" She and Xaviera had been dropped to the ground to walk with the other children. "*Anything* has to be better than this!"

The group stopped a door that didn't look any different from any other door they had passed on their way down the hall. Pete entered and after a few moments of low discussion he partly emerged and pointed at Colby. "You, come here."

The boy glared at him. "Why? What if I don't want to?"

"You don't get to make a decision. The master wants to see you." Two of the spear-bearers grabbed him and carried him inside. He kicked and wriggled but couldn't get free. Gohan stepped forward slightly, without really thinking about it, and was forced back by the remaining spear-bearers.

"Why does Cyrus want him?" Gohan asked them. "Doesn't he have enough servants?"

Aldric glanced at him. "What do you know about the master?"

"I know that all the cops in the world are searching for him. I know that there's a three million dollar bounty on his head." The knife was at his throat before he could even blink.

"Then you know too much," the man whispered with an evil glint in his eyes. Gohan forced himself not to panic and tried to think of a way to save his life.

"That's public knowledge. If you kill me because I know then you would have to also kill billions of people. That could get pretty tiresome after a while, don't you think?" The knife held its position.

"Let the boy go already he's tellin' the truth." Pete waved his hand and the group marched on, leaving an angry looking Aldric behind.

***

The cell was small, no larger than ten-by-ten, with rough stone walls and a hard cement floor. There were two cots, each against a wall, both perpendicular to the only entry and exit. There were no windows, seeing as it was underground, but there was a bucket to use the bathroom in and a sconce to hold a torch. Gohan sat on his small cot and stared off into the distance, wondering for the first time if he was doomed to stay a prisoner of Cyrus for the rest of his life.

The twins were next door and he heard their low voices whispering in the darkness. Rosalyn shared a cell with another girl down the row and on the walk he discovered that they were far from being the first children Cyrus and his gang had ever kidnapped.

There were hundreds of them.

Children of all ages, shapes, and colors were caged like animals in a large section of his hideout. Their ages ranged from five to sixteen and all had some duty to perform. Whether it be cooking, cleaning, serving, or entertaining. Some of the older ones were even taught how to pick pockets and murder innocent people. Gohan wasn't old enough to be considered for murder though he was for picking pockets. He was to be a servant, waiting on Cyrus hand-and-foot because the man was too lazy to do things for himself.

Xavier and Xaviera, at six-and-a-half, were too young for most things beyond rudimentary cleaning. Rosalyn was twelve, however, and she was being taught the basics of being a thug. He had no idea what they wanted with Colby and he was almost afraid to find out. It had been almost an hour and he hadn't seen nor heard any sign of him.

The cell door opened suddenly and Gohan found himself looking into the hostile gray eyes of Aldric. He pushed Colby forward and locked the door behind him, marching off somewhere down the hall. Gohan looked at his friend but the other boy didn't say a word. Instead he went to the other cot and collapsed on it, turning over to face the wall.

"What did he want with you? Are you okay?" Colby didn't say a word and Gohan was starting to get worried. Then he heard a sound, sort of a muffled squeak, and recognized it for what it was.

Sobbing.

"What did he did to you?" Gohan whispered, fearing the worst. He kneeled at his bedside and touched his shoulder slightly. Colby went completely still, not moving a muscle. "It's okay, Colby. I won't hurt you like he did."

"You're lucky Gohan," the boy said finally, his voice heavily laden with tears, "he won't do anything to you."

"What's to stop him from hurting anyone?" Gohan asked bitterly. "The police can't find him and we're only kids."

"He only likes blond boys and in Japan there aren't that many. That's why he chose me to be his," his voice lowered to a hoarse whisper, "pet."

Gohan saw red and was a little surprised at his own language. "That bastard! I'm going to kill him!"

"Gohan no!" Colby grabbed him and forced him to calm down. "Don't get hurt over me. I'm not worth it."

"Of course you are! No one deserves what he did to you!" His anger drained out of him suddenly and it was replaced by worry. "Did he tell you that?"

He shook his head. "Let's just say that my home life wasn't the best." He closed his eyes. "Good night, Gohan, and thanks."

The other boy patted his shoulder and returned to his place on his cot where he stared off into the darkness for a little while longer.


	4. Gohan, Where Art Thou?

ChiChi kept herself calm as she retrieved the phone, but her finger shook as she began to dial nine-one-one. Pausing on the last number, she thought of the most likely place that her son would be.

"If he told him to come I'm going to murder him!" ChiChi found the number in her address book and proceeded to call up her ex-husband long-distance in Tokyo. The phone had barely completed its second ring before it was picked up.

"Moshi moshi."

She began to shout at him, interrupting him every time he tried to speak. "You listen here Son Goku! If you convinced my son to come live with you then I'm going to have you arrested!"

There was a shocked silence. "Nani?! Why would I do something like that without even talking to you first?"

"You've always wanted him to live with you and you resent the fact that you can't see him!" ChiChi's face darkened in pure rage.

"I didn't tell him to come to Tokyo!" Goku's voice changed from anger to worry. "He's gone and you don't know where he is?! Never mind, forget it ChiChi! When he shows up I'm taking you to court for child neglect!" He hung up and ChiChi was left with only silence.

' _Where is he?_ ' ChiChi asked herself as she debated on whether or not she should go look for him. ' _My little boy is out there all alone!_ ' She decided that at least checking around the bus terminal couldn't hurt because she knew that Gohan didn't have nearly enough money for a plane ticket. Besides, children under eighteen couldn't purchase any. All those who tried were immediately identified as runaways and detained. She grabbed her purse and car keys, trying not to throw herself into a panic.

***

Breakfast was shoved underneath the door on a small metal tray and only consisted of two glasses of water and two bowls of what looked to be gruel. Gohan's stomach turned at the sight, missing sugar-coated cereal and blueberry pancakes, but he grabbed his portion anyway knowing that going until lunch on an empty stomach wasn't a good thing to do.

His slumber had been fitful at best and he was awake to hear the whimpers that came from Colby as he was hurt even in his dreams. Gohan had tried to calm him enough so that the nightmares would end, whispering soothing words that he himself didn't even believe. Everything was *not* going to be okay and they probably weren't ever going to escape.

"Ya' got ten minutes to eat before going to work!" one of the men who guarded the children shouted at them. Gohan went over to his friend and shook him awake, flinching a little when the other boy awoke with wild eyes and heavy breathing.

"It's just me," he whispered in a soothing voice as he handed him the tray. "Breakfast came."

"My dog wouldn't eat this crap," but he smiled weakly and began to eat anyway.

Gohan decided that a little conversation would go a long way. "What do you like to do when not locked up in an underground hideout?"

Colby grinned at his attempt at a joke. "I like to take apart things. TVs, telephones, radios -- all kinds of stuff. My father got so mad one time when I took apart the engine in his cherry red Corvette to see how it worked." His face darkened and a scowl appeared on his face. "I had stopped doing that for a while because they don't understand that I just have to see how things work. To my parents, I just destroying everything in sight."

He thought that Colby's parents sounded a lot like people who hated their own lives and loved making others join in the misery. "What do they do for a living?"

"My mother's a "homemaker"," he did an imitation of a falsetto voice complete with his fingers in the shape of quotation marks. "In other words she likes to laze around the house. My father's an accountant."

Gohan finished the last of his tasteless, lumpy cereal and pushed the bowl away. "I spend a lot of time reading, watching television, and on the computer when I can get it from my kaasan. She's a high school teacher but she wants to become a college professor. My tousan's a pediatrician in Tokyo. I think he makes a good doctor." He smiled at the other boy in a what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Listen, I'm going to make sure that Cyrus doesn't lay a finger on you. Don't worry about a thing."

He didn't bother to keep the hope from shining in his eyes. "How are you gonna do that?"

"C'mon you little brats!" a thin, gruff looking man growled as he unlocked the cell door. "Time to get to work."

Gohan grinned at him. "You'll see."

The walk was boring and uneventful. The twins, Rosalyn, and another girl walked with them. The man that was leading them caught the attention of another man who stood beside another one of the famous nondescript doors, and they were all ushered inside a small room that smelled of dust, sweat, and -- Gohan took a deeper sniff and cringed, recognizing the metallic scent -- blood.

"What are you going to do to us now?" Rosalyn asked, the angry look on her face barely seen by the dim glow of the single light bulb that hung above them. The thin man held up a thin strip of something with a cruel smirk and she gasped.

"Is that a collar? Are we just animals to you people?!" She glared at him and moved until her back was against their only exit. She opened in a crack and hurriedly shut it as she stared into the barrel of a gun. "Who rates a gun?" she asked him as she saw the knife he had in a sheath on his belt. "Can't be you."

"For that comment you're gonna go first, little girl." He grabbed her arm and yanked her towards him. She resisted and that gave Gohan enough time to whisper something to her.

"I smell blood, Rosalyn. That collar didn't cause it." She gulped and glanced around nervously from a sharp object besides his knife. She didn't find any. The thin man dragged her off into a corner and there was a few moments of silence while he put on the leather collar before the screaming started.

"You bastard! People usually use guns for these kinds of things not knives! Even an ice pick would have been better!" The man grunted something under his breath and her she went quiet.

"Why would she prefer one choice over any of the others?" Colby whispered. Gohan shrugged.

A miserable looking Rosalyn came into view, clutching at her left ear. Gohan stared at her until she moved her hand and an earring glinted in the dull overhead light. Gohan's eyes slid from the pained expression on her face to the smirk on the man's and he gulped slightly.

"I can't take pain as well as she can," he told him in the most polite voice he could muster. "Can we reschedule this?"

"Better yet how about you just give us ID bracelets?" One of the other kids, a short girl with dark hair said to him with heavy sarcasm and a found. "When I get out of here my daddy is going to have all of you people brought up on criminal charges!"

"Well you'll just have to stay here until the day you die then because I ain't getting thrown in no damn prison!" He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off toward the space in the back. "You're next for pissing me off!"

"Someone do something!" she shouted at them as she struggled. "You can't just let them get away with this madness!"

Gohan sighed and turned away as she began to scream. He knew that his turn was coming up soon and so far he saw nothing he could do about it. "Unless someone comes up with a plan we're screwed."

***

ChiChi came home from her search more worried than after she had gone out. The bus station had yielded unexpected results and she discovered that Gohan had been seen with an older woman who watched him get onto the bus but didn't get on herself. She had tried to find someone who knew her and could give her a name but in a city the size of Western Capital that was a pretty hopeless. She collapsed onto the sofa and turned on the television. The news report caught her attention and held it for its entire duration.

The newswoman straightened her gray business suit and cleared her throat. "We're here, on the scene, with two survivors of the incident. Apparently the bus driver was killed earlier today by an arrow with green-tipped feathers after stopping the bus to check it over. Martha Fletcher, one of the passengers, remembers what happened clearly. Ma'am, please tell us about incident."

"After the driver pulled over to the side of the road, and before he exited the bus to check things out, an arrow came right through the windshield and hit him through the neck. A little dark-haired boy told us that he was dead and that we had to run because he knew who that arrow belonged to. He and another little boy got us all out and we began to run off through the forest over there. Unfortunately, I think that bad man he had been speaking about took them and sold them into slavery." She looked down. "Very sad thing. The rest of the adults had been killed on the spot, but only me and a woman and her baby survived by hiding until the two men went away."

"Is this yet another assault and kidnapping by Cyrus and his group? Or is there some new criminal running around? Hopefully soon we will know the answer and discover what happened to the five children from that bus headed to Tokyo. Back to you Yuri."

ChiChi sat there for a long while, staring at the television screen without sight. Then trembling started throughout her entire body and a choked sob tore free from her throat. "No! They didn't get my little boy. I *refuse* to believe that!" She quieted herself by force of will and grabbed the phone from its nearby end table. Dialing in a phone number she was beginning to become familiar with, she drummed her fingers impatiently. After several rings the phone was finally picked up by a quiet voice that still made ChiChi's heart ache after all that time. He was calmer than he was before but she knew that her number showed up on the caller ID. It was only going to last for a matter of time.

"What is it now, ChiChi?" he asked in a strained voice. "Have you called to scream at me again because if you have..."

ChiChi felt the reality of the situation hit her and surprisingly she didn't burst into tears. "Have you seen the news about the bus, Goku?"

"Hai, sure I have. It's awful but why are we talking about it?"

"Gohan was on it."

Stunned silence was the only thing she heard for long moments before Goku drew in a shaky breath. "He was on the bus when they kidnapped those children?"

"Hai." She said this as calmly as she could even though she felt like screaming.

"Those bastards have my son!" He fell silent for a moment. "*Our* son. Don't worry about it, ChiChi. I'm getting him back if it's the last thing I ever do."

"Don't do anything stupid, Goku. I don't want to have to bury you." He didn't have any other living relatives and besides that friend of his, Krillin, there would be no one around to give him a decent burial. "Please call me back after you've made all of the arrangements and don't tell me about any of them."

He laughed, a sound currently not connected to any real amusement. "It's not anything illegal, you know. I'm a law abiding citizen."

Her voice was dry and heavily sarcastic. "Yeah and I'm a crazed harpy."

A silence. "Well, if the shoe fits..."

"Shut up, Goku." She disconnected the call and leaned back and closed her eyes. Her son just had to be found there were too many things for him to grow up and achieve. Couldn't do any of that if you were dead.

***

" _The sun will come out_  
Tomorrow  
Bet your bottom dollar  
That tomorrow  
There'll be sun

 _Just thinkin' about_  
Tomorrow  
Clears away the cobwebs and  
The sorrow  
''Till there's none"

"Singing is not going to make the pain stop," Rosalyn told the dark-haired girl with a roll of her eyes.

"It won't," she agreed, "but it makes me feel better because my daddy always does it when things are horrible. Sure can't get any more horrible than this."

"That's true," Colby said with a weary look. "If you must perform songs from old musicals why don't you go ahead and sing  _It's the Hard Knock Life_  while you scrub the floors, then?"

"Stop being so pessimistic. Kind of sad in a boy your age."

"You sound like my mother! How old are you anyway?"

"Fourteen if that's any of your business!"

"Calm down!" Gohan said as he gave a look to both of them. "This is not helping." Both looked ashamed at their outbursts considering what was going on around them. The group halted outside a door that made Colby's eyes widen. Gohan took one look at the door and knew that they were in front of Cyrus' room. "I promise that nothing will happen to you."

Colby looked at him, fear in his eyes, and felt that he could trust him from some unexplainable reason. "I believe in you, Gohan."

The thin man looked down upon them with a look that made Gohan angry. "How sweet!" Then the door was being opened and the two of them were being shoved inside an overly warm room with a large bed, a table, and a man that sat before a blazing fire.

***

"Are you the one I'm looking for?" Goku asked a little nervously as he stood in the doorway of a medium-sized room. Light spilled into the hallway from the office and he stared at the single occupant with curiosity.

"Are you looking for someone to solve a crime?" the low voice asked from behind the desk.

"Hai, I am."

"Then I'm the one you're looking for." The man rose and held out his hand. He was more than a six inches shorter than Goku himself and an eyebrow rose of its own accord. "The name's Vegeta."

"I'm Son Goku." He twisted the piece of paper that he held in his hand. "Have you heard about the bus thing on the news? The one that they think Cyrus had something to do with?"

"Cyrus, eh? Slimy little bastard. No one can find him." Vegeta flipped a few pages in the date book on his desk and located a blank space. "Do you need me to find out if your wife is cheating on your or somethin'?"

"Can you do it?" he asked.

Vegeta's brow creased in confusion. "Find your wife?"

"Iie, find out where Cyrus is hiding."

He smirked at him. "I'm the best there is, Son. I can find a little man like that in no time flat. Before we get into that, though, let's talk fee. Can you pay it?"

Goku smiled slowly and took out his checkbook. "Not a problem. I want to come with you when you go hunting for him."

Vegeta looked at him in disbelief for a moment before bursting into hysterical laughter. "Mister Softie wants to go on a bounty hunt!"

"I can keep up with you," Goku insisted. "I'm not as weak as I look."

"Tell you what," Vegeta said as he leaned forward in his desk chair, "you can come along on the final hunt if you don't annoy me during my information gathering."

"I won't annoy you."

He smirked. "We'll see. Right now I'm going to start looking and you can join me if you want to."

"Of course I want to! My son has been kidnapped by some man no military force in the world can find!"

"You want to know why they can't find him?" Vegeta asked him quietly. He went on at Goku's insistent nod. "His main hideout is underground and he often sends various people out into the public spotlight to distract attention. Performing a crime so close to his hideout is too dangerous for words. He's getting careless now and that will help us catch them all."

A single dark eyebrow rose. "Us? As in you and I?"

"You offered to help are you backing out now?" Vegeta grabbed a black trench coat from a hook behind the door and ushered the other man out. "It won't be too bad tonight, Son. I promise to keep the bad men in ski masks away from you."

Goku glared down at him. "Vegeta, I can hold my own without your help. Do I have to prove that to you?"

"Sure, go ahead." He settled his coat on his shoulders and spread his arms out wide. "Come at me, tough guy." The self-assured smile never left the shorter man's face even with Goku attacked him with obvious skill. The two of them exchanged blows for a while until Goku upped the speed of his assault. A small frown appeared between Vegeta's eyebrows, one that grew more and more fierce as the fight went on. Although Goku's longer reach gave him an advantage, Vegeta's smaller body gave him less of a target. The shorter man tripped the larger one and couldn't get out of the way in time. Both of them went crashing to the brown carpeted hallway before the private investigator's office.

"Get offa me before ya break something!" Vegeta growled as he squirmed weakly. He was, in fact, a little bit too tired to move. It had been a while since he had been able to go full out with anyone. Goku had surprised him. "Goku..."

The other man sat up and grinned. "You're pretty good at fighting, Vegeta."

His voice rose to a squeak. "Pretty good?! I'm only *pretty good*?!"

Goku looked at him, face completely devoid of any type of mocking smile. "You're the best person I've ever had the honor of sparring against and you're also the best person to help me find my son."

"Well a-arigatou." Vegeta cleared his throat and got to his feet, offering a hand down to his companion. "First we have to start down at the docks. Slavers have a habit of going through there because it's a quick way to get their merchandise off the island without a high risk of getting caught."

"My son is not a slave." He said this very firmly and precisely.

"He will be if we don't find him before they get him off the island. After that..." He trailed off with a shake of his head.

Goku led the way downstairs to the building's exit. "Gohan is not a slave and never will be a slave."

Vegeta gave him a sideways glance. "You better pray real hard to whatever higher power you believe in because it's sure as hell gonna get worse before it gets better."

"That's why you're here, isn't it? You handle the worse."

A little surprised chuckle came from deep inside his body. "Guess so, eh? I'm damage control."


	5. Knowledge is Power

The gentle evening wind brought strong smells of salt water and fish to the delicate nose of Son Goku. He followed Vegeta blindly, not knowing where the other man was taking him. For some unexplainable reason he trusted him, more than he had ever trusted anyone before. So when Vegeta stopped suddenly and flattened himself against the side of the building he was quick to follow suit.

Loud voices were coming closer and closer to their location, chatting about the latest shipments that had come into or departed from the Tokyo docks. There were the normal things like seafood, electronics, and steel, as well as the secret imports and exports of narcotics, slaves, and precious metals and stones. The docks never quieted or shut down for the day, and the city officials were willing to overlook the illegal deals as long as they got a small percentage of the profits. Everyone benefited from this system, except the slaves of course. Most died within a year after being acquired by their new masters, but those that did survive the oftentimes cruel treatment chose to take their own lives as a better alternative to slavery. A very small percentage of them got to see their families and homelands again.

Goku could count at least three different voices in the group and hoped that none of them decided to come their way. Although their was no doubt that he could handle himself in a fight, having the power didn't mean that he liked to use it. Goku preferred to try and talk things out before resorting to violence and he had made sure that Gohan knew to do the same. Why use barbaric force when civilized discussion would work just as well?

"If they come past us take them all out," Vegeta said almost without sound. "We can't risk any getting away."

Discussion was obviously a foreign concept to the P. I.

The voices came closer and closer, a woman's higher pitch now mingling with the lower pitches of the men. At the corner of the wall where the walkway they were on joined with the one that led down to the boats, the group decided to pause and lean against the stone of the building.

"Where's the new stuff from the boss? He didn't send anyone down yet this week."

"He's not going to, D.S. You know when he took that bus yesterday? He's keeping those kids."

A snort. "Why would he keep those whiny brats? I thought Cy had more sense than that."

"He's gonna train 'em and expand his empire, dumbass. We're going to own this planet one day."

The woman spoke. "I agree with D.S., Cyrus is losing his mind. Does he know how long it'll take to train those children in our ways?"

"Stop callin' me D.S.! My name is Yukio!"

A different voice spoke, one they hadn't heard before. "What's the matter, Drunken Samurai? Don't like your nickname?"

"Of course I don't like it. Would you like it if someone called *you* that?"

"He's not the one who drank two entire bottles of  _sake_  and tried to storm that convenience store because they wouldn't give you any for free," the woman laughed. "You should have seen yourself attack the doors with that broom."

"Forget about that already! Let's talk shipments."

"That's fine with me," the third man answered. "I'm heading over to Kaohsiung two days from now to pick up a load of slaves. After that I'm heading off to Qingdao and should be back in port by next Wednesday. Where will you three be?"

"Ah, I've got to fly down to Melbourne. An Aussie is taking me to court."

Yukio laughed. "What did you do *this* time Kaoru? Offend him with your ugliness?"

"Very funny D.S., but it has to do with some property I own down there. Apparently I'm not taking care of it like I should be. It'll probably only take a week and then I'll be back. Are we still going over to headquarters Friday?"

"Cy is changin' his master plan so every one of us in the area has to be there. You better be back in time for the meetin' if you want to live."

"I will, no problem. Zeshin's the one going out on the water." They talked for a few moments more before going back the way they had come.

"Your son's fine for the moment, and we have until next week to get him out."

"Get *them* out," Goku corrected. "I'm not going to leave those other children in there knowing that there's a chance I could get them all back home with their parents."

Vegeta rolled his eyes. "Survival is the most important thing in life, Son. You don't take unnecessary risks."

"I can't just ignore the fact that he has those kids, Vegeta. I'm sorry that you don't understand but-"

"I understand more than you think I do," Vegeta interrupted him. "I understand that our job is to get your son out of Cyrus' hideout. I understand that you're willing to put yourself at risk to rescue a group of brats that you don't even know. I also understand that you don't care that your death would make a lot of people miserable, including me." He abruptly turned away and almost ran down the pavement. "C'mon, we've got places to go."

***

Cyrus didn't move from his seat by the fire even when Gohan went over to stand next to him with a curious look on his face. He had heard tons of horrible things from the television about the man, from kidnapping to rape, but not one report described how he looked. Gohan often imagined some huge, six-foot-seven bald man with insanity clear in his eyes but that was far off Cyrus' actual appearance.

He was tall, yes, but not as tall as six-seven with dark brown hair that hung far down his back in a single braid and a goatee and mustache that made him look like a Musketeer. His arms were well-developed with muscle and probably so were other parts of his body. Gohan gazed down at him and jumped slightly when light gray eyes met his own dark ones.

"Are you the new servant boy?" he asked, his voice empty of any kind of emotion. He moved forward slightly and Gohan could see by the movement of the muscles in his upper arms that he was about to rise. "There are things that I want you to do."

Gohan frantically tried to think of a way to postpone, possibly forgo, anything that Cyrus could think of for he and Colby to do. He smiled as brightly as he could and held out his hand. "My name's Son Gohan. Pleased to meet you."

The man looked a little lost on what to say but finally settled on a simple handshake and a nod. "About the service-"

"I could tell you a story!"

Cyrus blinked. "What?"

Gohan nodded and motioned for him to sit in the chair. "I read a lot of books, you see, and I know stories from all over the world. I know one that's pretty true. You should be interested in hearing about it."

The man let himself be coaxed into sitting down and a startled expression came over his face as Gohan paced back and forth, trying to piece his story together. Colby moved as far from Cyrus as he could and prayed to Kami that Gohan could distract him.

"You can read?" Cyrus asked with an expression of disbelief.

Gohan nodded. "My kaasan's a teacher so she made sure that I could read from preschool." He spotted a bookcase to one side of the room filled with older looking books. "Do you read often?"

His eyes looked over to where the boy was looking and he shrugged. "Those over there my men found. I keep them because they look important. Can't read a word of 'em." He looked embarrassed at revealing that fact though he had never felt that way before. There was something about Son Gohan that set him on edge.

Gohan wandered over to the bookcase and began to browse the titles. "I've never seen this book before." He pulled out a smallish leather-bound volume and returned to his place next to Cyrus. It's about what I was going to tell you but I sure didn't know *this* existed."

"What's it about?"

He opened it and quickly read over a page with a faint smile. "The dragonballs." He didn't see the man move until he was standing up before him.

"What do you know about the dragonballs?" Cyrus asked with narrow eyes and a weapon-filled hand. Gohan remained calm and motioned to the book with his free hand.

"Only what I've read. A lot of books point to various locations where they've been sighted but not a one can really tell you how to find them since they seem to move around a lot." He looked at him. "You want them." No question just a stated fact.

"I have been looking for 'em for months!" Cyrus dropped back down into his chair. "I don't trust those idiots I have working for me but I couldn't read any of these books to save my life." He sighed and glanced at Gohan. "My life *does* depend of finding these things, you know. So does a lot of other peoples' lives."

"I can help you," Gohan told him as he placed the book down onto the single table. "Teaching you how to read would be an easy thing to do."

"You would do that?" A single nod. "I abducted you and still you offer to teach me!"

Gohan smiled at him. "Everyone deserves a chance to learn, Cyrus, even you. But--" He let his eyes flicker over to where Colby sat in a far-off corner. "--you have to leave my friend alone in exchange."

Cyrus looked at Colby and was surprised to see that he was glaring at him. "Didn't you like it?" he asked in a genuinely confused voice. "I thought that you did..."

"How could you think that?!" he asked him angrily. "What's wrong with you?"

Gohan frowned and shushed his new friend for a moment. He was only keeping a lid on his own rage because something wasn't making sense. "Cyrus, what made you think that he liked what you did to him?"

"There's this stuff I use," Cyrus went over to open a drawer in his bedside table. "You mix it up and stick this needle here into a vein."

"So you drugged him and expected that to make it okay." Gohan shook his head slowly. "That doesn't make it okay, Cyrus. Rape is rape. Besides, he's too young to even know what sex really is."

Colby rolled his eyes. "Have you conveniently forgotten that you're *younger* than I am?"

"Kaasan always said that kids knew too much of the wrong things these days. I never understood what she meant until now." He turned back towards the man. "You can't do that to anyone anymore unless they ask you to and they're over eighteen."

He nodded and then started as if he was just realizing what he was doing. "I'm listenin' to a kid. There is somethin' seriously wrong with this."

"Have you ever gone to school before?"

"Naw, I never had to. My pops had me help out with the family business as soon as I was old enough to count money."

Gohan smiled at him. "We have, Cyrus. You can learn stuff from me and Colby."

"I'm not teaching him anything," Colby immediately said. "He won't let us go even if we help him."

Cyrus looked at the two of them, a thoughtful expression on his face. "If you two teach me how to read and help me find the dragonballs then I might be persuaded to let you go back to your families."

Gohan immediately nodded and went to look on the shelf for an easier book. After finding it the three of them took seats on the floor, a boy on each side of Cyrus, and began to slowly go through the sounds. Doing this brought pleasant memories to Gohan, a time before the divorce when his father had been teaching him how to read and write.

  
_The late afternoon sun cast long shadows against the walls as Gohan waited patiently for his father. He had been playing all day outside with his friend Videl, and now that the sun was going to sleep he got to spend time with his father. He knew that his tousan worked in a big building full of sick children and made them feel all better again. He wasn't home much, but Gohan thought that the sick kids should get him more. His father came into the comfortable living room where he was and placed a pad onto the table._

_"I'm going to teach you all about our language so that you can go to school ahead of all the other children."_

_He nodded. "Smart."_

_"Exactly." He pulled a crayon from his shirt pocket. "Your mother wants you to never have to want for anything, but I think she pushes you too hard. Kids need to have fun, it's what they do best."_

_"Kaasan makes me study every day, tousan." He pouted. "I wanna play with Videl."_

_He sighed and took a brief look over his shoulder to the kitchen where ChiChi was currently cooking dinner. "I know, son, and soon as I get my hours changed I'll be at home so you can go play."_

_Gohan sensed his father's unhappy mood and smiled at him. "You're fun, tousan. Teach me."_

_"When you put all of these parts together you get a picture and that picture stands for a word." He wrote down the numbers from one to ten in both hiragana and kanji, making sure that Gohan was paying attention. "Some words have a another word that means the exact opposite. Good is the opposite of bad."_

_Gohan nodded intently. "Op'site."_

_"You can spell numbers with words, Gohan, and kanji. Ichi is just one line while ni is two lines of different sizes." He handed him the red crayon he had been using to write with. "Now you write down the three ways to spell one, Gohan."_

_"Number one," he carefully wrote it out, "word ichi, kanji ichi."_

_Goku grinned and gave his son a hug. "Very good! You're a smart little boy." Gohan looked up at him and just smiled._

  
***

The darkness pressed in on all sides as they walked down the cracked sidewalk, progressing deeper into a part of town that Goku knew that he really shouldn't be traveling through at night. Vegeta walked beside him, casting confidence as the sun casts light. The shadows froze in every pitch-black alley he strode past, fading back into the background to choose another target. The abandoned storefronts passed by, all in states of disrepair, until Vegeta stopped in front of one plain gray door in a building that wasn't quite as dilapidated as the others. He turned to look at his companion, a serious expression on his face.

"Don't speak in this place, Son. You don't know what it's about."

Goku looked at him, curiosity plain on his face. "I would if you told me." Vegeta's face adopted an expression of annoyance but he paused briefly to explain what was going on within.

"You know that Cyrus deals in slavery and murder, right? Well there are other things he dabbles in, Son."

"Drugs?"

"Well, yes but that's not what I'm talking about." He turned back and beat a patterned tattoo on the door. It opened a crack and after a whispered conversation between whoever it was inside the building and Vegeta the two of them were allowed to cross over the threshold.

Loud, pulsating music hit them as soon as they stepped into the building though you couldn't hear it outside. Vegeta didn't even bat an eyelash at the transition or even pay attention to the various scantily clad people wandering around the area. Goku's eyes widened at what some of the people were wearing and was just about to ask a question when Vegeta looked over his shoulder and glared him into being quiet. It was as if he known that his mouth was opening.

The bouncer that was guarding the door motioned to another large, bald guy and the second man led them up a set of metal stairs in the corner and down a deserted back hallway. Here the lights were dimmer and the music wasn't quite as loud. The bald bouncer knocked on another unmarked door and waited a moment for the person within to answer. He opened the door wide, then, and allowed them to go in.

The man behind the desk was dark-haired and equally dark-eyed with the lean-muscled body of a swimmer. He was dressed in an extremely neat black Italian suit and red silk tie that he periodically checked for lint. A smile crossed his face as Vegeta entered and his hands came together to form a point over the black lacquer of his desktop.

"What do I owe the honor of a meeting with the prince?" His smile twisted until it was a near smirk. "I'm sure you haven't come to.... sample my wares."

Vegeta took a seat in the closest leather chair, careful to retain eye contact with the other man. Goku followed his lead by taking a seat beside him and after the initial once-over, the well-dressed man ignored him completely. "I have business with your boss, Guido. Where is he?"

He looked at him silently for a moment before starting to laugh. "Do you actually think I'll tell you anything?"

"It's not what I think," he leaned forward in his chair, "it's what I know. Once you're gently persuaded to tell me everything'll go smoothly." At the word "gently" Guido's eyes hardened.

"If you hurt me you'll never get out of this place alive."

Vegeta game him his best uncaring smile. "So be it. My life would be complete just by ripping you into a million tiny pieces." Goku's eyes widened but he forced himself not to say a word. The P. I. might be ready to die but he sure as hell wasn't. Guido's hands began to tremble slightly and though his facial expression didn't change the fear was evident in his eyes. He believed Vegeta would murder him and Goku believed he would too, if given half the chance.

"The boss is hiding out in his main place in the Kuro Forest, a few miles outside of Satan City. There's a tree there that you need a code to get into the elevator that'll take you below."

"I don't need a code," Vegeta said as he mentally filed away all of the information. "Locks don't stop me."

"Not even electronic locks?"

"*Especially* not electronic locks." He stood and nodded to his companion. "Come on, we're going."

On their way out the door Guido called out a warning. "The base is heavily guarded with dangerous men, little prince. It would be shameful to be cut down as soon as you enter."

He turned to look at him, a predatory look on his face. "Maybe, but you know what Guido? I'm more dangerous than they can possibly imagine." Shutting the door behind him he joined Goku in the hall.

"What *is* this place, Vegeta? Do they really sell drugs in here?"

Shaking his head at Goku's naïveté, he gestured at all the near-naked people. "This is a bordello, Son, a house of prostitution."

Goku's eyes widened as he looked at the people and gasped as the realization at last sank in. For a brief moment, he wondered why someone would choose prostitution as a career, but all rational thought left his mind as their way was barred by two *very* large men. While he curbed his panic, Vegeta remained as calm and collected as ever.

"Are you two just going to stand there like bloated lawn ornaments or are you going to get out of our way?"

The bouncer on the right spoke. "We have orders not to let you leave alive."

He just grinned, eager for a battle. Goku exhaled and readied both his mind and his body for the oncoming fight. "Do you have orders to die too?" Without giving them a chance to answer he ran at the one who had answered his question and smashed his fist into his jaw. Goku, who just wanted to get things over with and get some rest before his shift at the hospital, took the muscle man on the left out with a well-placed kick to his kneecap. Vegeta didn't stop even when both were down, he quickly dispatched them with smooth slashes to their throats. He saw the shocked look on Goku's face and answered with a simple, "You have to kill them before they kill you."

They separated on the sidewalk, Goku to his home and Vegeta to wherever he went when not on the clock. The larger man paused mid-step and turned around to face the P. I.

"Did that man in there call you a prince?"

Vegeta sighed. "It's a long story. You sure you wanna hear it?"

"Of course I do. Are you sure you want to tell me?"

"There's a coffee shop that's open late a couple of blocks down. We can talk there."


	6. The Law of the Jungle

Gohan and Colby taught Cyrus for the rest of the afternoon, only stopping to eat lunch. By the end of the first session he could read simple words by sounding them out and Gohan had hope that he would be able to read harder books by the end of the week. Dinner soon came and they were given permission to accompany Cyrus to the dining room that he and his people used.

"I'm going to tell them not to bother either of you," he explained. "It's the only way you'll be left alone."

Colby was skeptical of his authority. "Do you actually think they're *that* afraid of you?"

A knife was pulled from Cyrus' boot and he flicked it across the room to embed itself into the wall next to one man's head. The man fainted and everyone else at the table moved away. "Does that answer your question?"

The boy looked up at him with wide eyes. "Yeah."

"You don't have to prove everything with violence, you know." Gohan told him. "My tousan taught me to use words instead of my fists."

"Your tousan's an idiot. Nothing can be solved without force. It's not possible."

Gohan's facial expression didn't change, but anger sparked in his eyes. "Do you have someone that you love?"

A little caught off-balance by the quick subject change, Cyrus nodded. "My mother and I were very close."

"She's deceased now?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"What if I called your mother a bitch? Would you be angry?"

Cyrus' hand clenched involuntarily around the hilt of yet another knife. "Where are you going with this?"

His eyes shone in the overhead light. "You would be extremely angry if I called your mother out of her name. What makes you think calling my father out of *his* name is any different?"

The man paused in mid-step and turned to look at him. "Is this another lesson? I didn't ask for one."

"Life's full of lessons: some you go searching for while others just fall into your lap." Gohan smiled sadly and sighed. "My tousan taught me that. I remember everything he had ever told me about life and I believe every word."

"You have a good father, Gohan," Colby said as they took a seat at the recently vacated table. "When we get out of here can I come and live with you guys?"

"Wait a minute! Who said that you were ever getting out of here alive?" Cyrus narrowed his eyes. "Is there some other leader that I don't know about?"

"You can't keep us here forever. Some day they're going to find you and we'll go free."

He shook his head as he caught the eye of a server. "That day will never come because we are more intelligent then they give us credit for. We are not stupid enough to prey upon the ones who can do something about it. Our hideout is secure, they don't even know where I am, and we have a large number of people working everywhere in the world. No one can defeat us."

"So you only attack and steal from the weak," Gohan said. "That's shameful of you."

"We aren't samurai, kid. The Bushido code means nothing to us. We're just a group of people trying to survive."

Colby couldn't take it anymore. He slammed his fists down on the table, startling both Cyrus and Gohan as well as the servant who had been filling his master's glass with white wine. "What do you think the victims are trying to do? Frolic in the fields? We're *all* trying to survive you jackass! If you just take what people have worked hard for then they'll just be even worse off then they were before!"

Cyrus' eyes went flat and cold. "The survival of others outside of my gang isn't my problem." Colby was seconds away from attacking the man and Gohan saw it. The boy laid his hands over the clenched fists of his friend and shook his head.

"By taking what others have you only weaken them," Gohan said seriously. "By weakening them you weaken society. If society weakens then chaos will rule and those you've stolen from before will steal from you in the future. Each person is only a small part in a much larger thing and each and every part is needed to keep things running smoothly. If you upset the balance then we all lose."

"We're the ones on the top of the food chain," he said with a self-assured grin, "and you two kids are just bottom-feeders. It's our right, as the top dogs, to take from the lesser dogs. If you can't fight for what you have then you don't deserve it. Only the strong survive; the weak perish."

"Let me hurt him," Colby begged in a whisper. "Please* let me hurt him!"

Gohan sighed and chose to dish food out onto his plate. "Violence wouldn't do any good, Colby. That's what made him in the first place. If you really wanted to get through to him then you would teach him. How else would he learn?" He ate slowly, not tasting a bite. Son Gohan had more important things on his mind, things that involved the education of Cyrus. It only took one word, one action to change someone's life forever.

***

The coffee shop was still fairly filled with the late dinner crowd when Vegeta and Goku took seats in the back. The two of them sat there in silence, merely staring at each other, until a waitress came to take their orders.

"Coffee, black," Vegeta said without looking at her. After taking Goku's order of hot tea and a cinnamon bun she departed, once again leaving them in silence.

"Do I have to start the conversation?" Goku asked in amusement. "Or are we just going to sit here all night?"

He lowered his voice to a near whisper and leaned partially over the table. "My story isn't that dramatic, Son. There were no battles or disownment. I just left."

"You had to have a reason. Princes just don't leave."

He smiled slightly. "That's true. I come from a country where a knife in the back is extremely common, especially among the upper class. Early on in my life my father locked me in my very own stone prison because he feared for my life."

"That was good of him," Goku commented. "I never knew my parents."

The shorter man snorted. "He didn't do it because he loved me, Son. He did it because I'm his only heir. If he dies and I'm not around to take the throne the entire country would fall apart. I got fed up with his restrictions for "my welfare" and split. That was three years ago." He had come a long way from the clueless man that used to command the Tokyo citizens. Most would laugh at him to his face, but there were a few that would snicker covertly behind their hands. Vegeta had thought that something was wrong with him until he realized that no one outside of his kingdom was going to do anything at his beck and call. That was when he began to observe and learn. "Since then I've learned the tricks of my trade. Private investigating pays a lot of money."

Goku frowned. "That's because you risk your life almost daily. You have to be compensated in some way."

The conversation paused briefly to allow the waitress to place their orders onto the table. "Will there be anything else, sirs?" Vegeta merely waved her away with one hand while Goku smiled and told her politely that no, there would be nothing else. After the woman was once again taking the order of another patron, Vegeta spoke.

"There are people after me, Son. Not to kill me but to take me back to my father. Promise me that if I get captured that you will try to rescue me. If you cannot, then kill me."

Goku was bewildered. "Why? Why is the mere thought of going back making you so angry?"

"I will not let that man imprison me in a cell made of his ideals. He will not deprive me of my right to grow beyond the narrow confines of his beliefs. Vegeta-ouji was not satisfied with his life back in Saiya so he became just Vegeta and created a new one. He did not make me, I made myself."

"For three million yen it wouldn't matter if you had made yourself into a psychopath," a voice spoke up from behind Vegeta's head. "The money more than makes it worth my while." Vegeta twisted around in his chair, silently cursing himself for not noticing the man earlier, and took in his wild black hair and intelligent dark brown eyes. He then rose slowly to meet the other man and discovered a few things: he was several inches shorter than his would-be capturer and also not quite as clueless. Vegeta laughed at little and deliberately turned his back on him.

"You're not even worth my time."

The man blinked. "What?"

"He said that you're not worth his time," Goku smiled pleasantly at him. "Have a nice day!"

He came around to stand in front of their table, blocking their view of the door. "Do you two people know who I am?"

"Should we care?" Vegeta asked in a bored tone of voice. "By the way, you need to move before I do it for you. I don't let anyone block my only escape route that doesn't involve breaking through something. I promised myself that I would always try the doors first before going for the windows."

"I'm Yamcha!" he exclaimed in a frustrated tone. "Haven't you heard of any excellent bounty hunters?"

Vegeta sighed, his patience for the man running a little low. "Hai, I've heard of the list of great bounty hunters each country puts out yearly. Iie, you were never on it." He pulled some cash from his pocket and placed it on the table, being sure to leave a ten percent tip. "If you're willing to go up against me you're free to try. I just hope that your medical insurance has been paid up."

He growled low in his throat and pulled a gun from the back waistband of his pants. "You won't make a fool out of me!" Vegeta and Goku both moved out of reflex, throwing themselves in opposite directions.

"I thought you said that there were no murders after you!" Goku shouted to him as the other patrons screamed in terror. He rolled underneath the nearest table, tipping it over to give himself adequate shelter to hide behind. Vegeta's voice came over the din clearly, almost as if the room was completely silent.

"He's not going to kill me, Son, only wound me enough so that I faint from blood loss. It'll be easier to drug me and drag me back to Saiya that way."

"Can you stop him?" Goku shouted as Yamcha reloaded his gun and continued to fire. "There's only a guarantee that he won't kill *you*."

Vegeta nodded and gave him a thumbs up sign. Sprinting out into open area he drew Yamcha's fire and ran from the coffee shop with the angry man chasing after him. Goku stood beside the table just staring for a moment before finally apologizing to everyone and following them outside.

He had to make sure Yamcha didn't do anything stupid with so many innocent people around.

"Come back here you little bastard!" Yamcha shouted as he fired. People on the street either screamed mindlessly or dove for cover as the enraged man chased the Saiya-jin prince. Goku ducked into the nearest alley and ran down to the other end, trying to catch up to his new friend by taking a short cut. He saw the prince turn a corner into a park and quickly climb up a tree. Yamcha stopped in the middle of the street in front of the park and slowly began to search every nook and cranny. Goku thought that he was a little too enthusiastic about his job.

"What will you do when you find him?" he asked, startling the other man. Yamcha spun around, gun at chest level, and glared at him.

"I'm going to shoot him in a non-vital area, drug him, and take him back to Saiya to claim my prize."

He shook his head at his words. "He hasn't done anything to you."

"So?" Yamcha turned back towards the park. "It's all about the reward, or haven't you figured that out yet? People need money to live and that would take care of me for the rest of my life. If a worried old man in a stone castle gets something out of it in return then so be it."

"It all comes down to money," Goku said softly. "It's always about money. What will stop someone else from just taking it all away from you? Eventually someone will come along with a bigger gun and a badder attitude and then you'll be the one on the receiving end of this nonsense. The cycle will just continue on."

All thoughts of his reward were forgotten in favor of anger at Goku's words. "You don't have the right to tell me *anything*! Look at yourself," he sneered, "with those expensive clothes and shoes. You've never gone hungry because you had no money to buy food. You had it easy."

"I haven't been wealthy all my life, you know. What money I have I've earned. Have you gone to college at all?" He went on at Yamcha's head shake. "I have. For seven long years I've studied to be a doctor, for five even longer years I was a resident at Tokyo General. Don't speak to me about "having it easy" because I've worked harder than you *ever* have." Goku turned his eyes toward the tree that Vegeta was currently crouched in. "Just leave us alone. Come back when you've grown up."

Yamcha, sensing that he wasn't going to get anything that night, abruptly turned and walked back the way he had come. After several minutes Vegeta poked his head between the thick leaves and proceeded to drop down to the ground.

"Nice speech," he said with a tiny grin.

Goku sighed. "It wasn't nice; it was necessary. People like him make me so angry with their whining. You can't get anything if you don't *do* anything. No one seems to understand that."

"I do," Vegeta held his eyes for a moment before looking down. "I may not be the most wealthy man in the world but I earned what I do have. Nothing in this world comes without a price. Life doesn't work that way." He fell silent then and looked off into a distance that wasn't seen by him. His eyes were viewing something deeper than the dark horizon. "We need to leave as soon as possible for the forest. Cyrus may do something that I'd have to kill him for if we wait."

"Is it better to leave tonight or tomorrow morning?"

"Tonight," he answered, keeping his face turned away. "We're going to need a full day to infiltrate so it's better if we leave while it's still dark. I'll take care of the arrangements but you need to take care of any loose ends of your own."

Goku pulled a slim black cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number from memory. "Anzai? This is Goku. I'm not going to be able to make it in to work today or tomorrow." He smiled slightly at the shocked silence on the other end. Goku hadn't missed a day of work since Gohan's sixth birthday party. "You know what? I might not be there Friday either. It's very important, you know that. Or I wouldn't be missing work for it. The kids are important to me too. It's taken care of? Alright, ja." He hung up and turned off his phone. "We leave tonight."

"Good," Vegeta said quietly, his mind already thinking about the things they would need. "Good."

***

The forest was quiet as they walked through it, deathly quiet. Vegeta remained tense, alert for the someone or something that had scared all of the owls and nocturnal animals away. Goku, having grown up in the woods with his grandfather, also knew that the forest was never completely quiet unless something was wrong. There was always the soft calls of the birds and the low sound of rustling plants as an animal passed through them. Even the wind's low, haunting song moved among the trees. The two men kept crouched low to the ground, eyes and ears tuned completely into the forest around them, each hoping that they could be the attackers instead of the attacked.

The trees were barely discernible from the inky blackness that was the forest. Usually a person would have severe problems with moving around, taking tiny steps to try and avoid foreign objects, but both Goku and Vegeta were moving as if it were a clear, sunny day. Neither knew that they weren't the only one with the Sight but neither were comfortable with discussing it with someone they had just met. They didn't see as other people saw in the darkness, instead they saw the way air moved to accommodate an object. They could see the aura, the ki, that every living thing emitted. There were no twigs stepped on, no branches broken, no trees bumped into. They were one with the forest, giving themselves over to it and allowing the flora to guide them to their destination.

After another half-hour's walk, Vegeta stopped and remained in a crouch. "His hideout is only five minutes away now," he said this almost without voice, a sound that nearly blended in with the whispering of the wind, but still Goku heard and understood him. "We can't go in by the main entrance, so we'll have to find another way. There has to be a ventilation duct around somewhere."

"We need a plan after we get inside," Goku said seriously. "I hope you don't think we can just fight our way through his people."

"I'm not stupid, Goku." The taller man smiled slightly at his use of his first name. "We don't want anyone to die unless they have to. We go down through the ventilation, taking out any guards we see with a silenced gun, and make our way slowly to where the prisoners are being kept. After freeing all of those small children you think should go with us and sending them to the elevator, we'll go find Cyrus and make him pay for what he's done."

"Not quickly. I want him to suffer."

If Vegeta was surprised at his words he gave no indication. "We will first interrogate him and then torture him until he begs for mercy. When, at last, his spirit is broken we will then dispatch him to Enma-sama."

Goku felt his even his guilty conscience smile. "Acceptable, but then again, I know it would only be glorious if I did it myself."

"Are you volunteering?"

"Iie," he shook his head. "I can't go back to my son with a man's blood on my hands after telling him all of his life not to let violence embrace him in its bloody arms. After your first killing it becomes easy to do a repeat performance."

"I respect your thoughts," Vegeta said quietly as he began pulling things from his backpack, "but don't be killed or get your son killed because of them." They both fell silent as Vegeta assembled various things and proceeded to wait until the hour of the dawning sun.


	7. Shattered Dreams

The sun's weak morning light filtered through the brilliant green leaves of the plants around them, successfully waking Vegeta from a light slumber. He stretched slightly and just looked at his companion for a moment before waking him for the day.

Vegeta had never really noticed how different someone could be from himself. There were things that were similar between them like the passion for fighting and the quick thinking, but he was sure that was where they ended. Besides, he was a Saiya-jin and Goku was ningen. They couldn't have much in common.

Despite how often he continued to tell himself that they were not compatible there was something that kept binding them together. Some people would say that it was fate, while still others would consider it chance. Vegeta was one of the latter ones; nothing dictated what would happen in his life, he was in complete control of his destiny.

Goku stirred slightly and began to make the upward climb through the thick layers of slumber. It was only just past dawn by the glow-in-the-dark numbers on Vegeta's watch, but he felt that there was no hurry to get going. The other man should get all of the sleep he could while there was still time.

' _Stop lying to yourself_ ,' a small voice deep down inside scolded. ' _You know that you just want to watch him sleep. Why is admitting the truth so hard?_ '

He spoke crossly to it, more than a little irritated because he had, indeed, been hearing the truth. ' _I need no one in my life. It's better to be alone._ '

' _Keep telling yourself that._ ' Now the voice was gentle. ' _You may believe it one day._ '

"Shut up!" he said aloud accidentally, startling Goku into full wakefulness. He sat straight up, groping for a weapon that wasn't there.

"Wha? What's going on? Is there someone attacking us?"

"Iie," he sighed. "You can go back to sleep. It's only seven."

Goku took one look at his face and shook his head. "Something's obviously bothering you so spill it. Keeping it all inside isn't good, Vegeta."

He looked into his warm eyes and found himself saying things he thought Enma-sama himself couldn't pry from him. "I look at you and I feel something, some kind of emotion I never felt before. I'm usually only angry, tired, or neutral but this is more powerful. This is something I can't control. It... frightens me."

"You hate to lose control," he said in mutual understanding. "You could always count on yourself when everything and everyone around you had failed. If you lose your control then you lose yourself."

His eyes widened and a look of wonderment came upon his face. "Exactly! I've never met anyone who understood that so well. I usually get called a control freak."

"Well," he smiled. "You *are* a control freak, but there's nothing wrong with that." He paused and said in a softer voice, "You are right about the emotion, Vegeta, but I can put a name to it."

"Oh?"

He nodded once. "Hai, it's love."

Vegeta's world froze for one long moment and all he could hear above the dead silence in his mind was the beating of his heart and another. The thumps grew louder and louder until they filled his ears with deafening noise. Just when he thought that his heart could take anymore the thumps ceased and he was left in peaceful silence.

"Vegeta, are you alright? You have the strangest look on your face." Goku laid a steadying hand on his shoulder and gazed at him in concern.

"D-did you just say that it's love?" The last word ended so high up on the scale that it was a mere squeak.

He nodded, completely relaxed. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh, iie. N-nothing's wrong." He bit his lip slightly and turned away. Everything was becoming a little bit too much for him. He looked into Goku's eyes and said in a weak voice, "I'm confused."

"Love is a confusing emotion, Vegeta, but we have time to talk about it later. Right now we need to perform a rescue." Acting on impulse, Goku bent down and quickly kissed the other man full on the mouth. "For good luck."

"Luck..." He said dazedly while bringing one hand up to touch his lips. "Yeah, good luck to you, too."

No one was around as they carefully moved between the trees searching for some small thing above ground that would enable them to enter Cyrus' hidden hideout undetected. Goku helped Vegeta by pointing to various things, but all were discounted when the small device in Vegeta's hands showed that there was no metal in the immediate vicinity.

There was a fairly large tree stump, about six or so feet away from the two men's current position, that set the green lines on the nearly-invisible grid that made up the viewing area of his detector rise into higher levels than before. Vegeta crouched next to it and rapped with his knuckles discovering that the stump was indeed hollow. The two of them worked quickly, running careful fingers along the outer wood to find some sort of hidden catch and, after hearing the soft sound of it releasing, the lid was slid away.

"There are small holes in this wood so that air can filter through," Vegeta whispered as he looked down into the darkness. Steel lined the inner section of the tree so that they both knew that it was their ticket inside. He attached a cord onto the lip of the hollow stump, tugging to make sure that it was secure, and motioned for his companion to climb down first. He was going to replace the lid so that nothing seemed the least bit out of place.

Goku's weight held the cord steady as Vegeta slowly climbed down to join him, a small flashlight glowing at his belt. For ten minutes they descended, each hoping that they would reach the bottom soon. By the small beam of light that Vegeta's flashlight produced, Goku saw the floor as a distant metallic gleam. Judging the remaining distance as only three or so feet, he let go of the cord and let gravity carry him down the rest of the way. He braced himself for the impact and was startled when it didn't come when it should have. Instead he dropped an additional three more feet and gritted his teeth as his heavy booted feet impacted with the floor with a dull thud that made a bone-jarring jolt run up both his legs to end at the base of his spine. He must have made some sort of pained sound because Vegeta quickly climbed the rest of the way down and turned concerned eyes toward him.

"Are you alright?" he asked, quickly checking him over with his hands to see if there was any major damage.

Goku sighed. ' _I'm too old for this stuff._ ' "My inexperience judged the distance to the floor wrong. So instead of only falling three feet, I fell six."

"Ow," he winced, rubbing the other man's lower back. "Do you need to rest here for a minute? We have plenty of time until everyone wakes up."

"Iie, we can't if we want to get in and out with the minimum amount of casualties." He pulled out his gun and removed the safety as Vegeta removed his backpack and let most of his equipment rest where it was. In the middle of a chase the total weight of the things you were carrying on you could be the deciding factor. "Let's do it."

The two of them crawled along the ventilation duct, peeking through the steel grating into the rooms beyond. It was only seven-fifteen, still enough time to free the children before Cyrus began his day. The long hallway was deserted as the two of them silently walked down it, but the sounds of footsteps soon made themselves known to the men. A side hallway enabled a quick way to get out of sight and they saw the lone guard pass them on his patrol. Vegeta yanked him off to the side and pressed the cold muzzle of his silenced pistol against the man's forehead and made sure that he saw the empty look in his eyes.

"Where do you keep the prisoners?" Goku asked in his most pleasant voice. He had decided while still above ground that he would use kindness before threats. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar as the old saying goes.

The guards voice was heavily accented almost to the point of misunderstanding. "I will not tell you. Nothing either of you do to me could ever rival what the Master would do to me if I tell you where the children are."

Vegeta's voice, when he spoke, was quiet and devoid of all emotion. "What if I told you that your master isn't half as scary as I am?"

"You lie," he said while staring into his eyes. Something there made him pale and he rose one shaking hand towards the direction he had come from. "T-that way. They are there."

"Arigatou," he said with a wide smile. His finger pulled the trigger in one quick moment and he dropped the guard's dead body onto the floor. "You've been a big help."

"Ve-ge-ta," Goku drew the syllables of his name out in disapproval as they went off down the hallway.

"I clearly said above ground that I would *try* to minimize the casualties. You can't actual believe that if we had let him go he wouldn't have run straight to Cyrus."

"Iie, he would have run straight to Cyrus," Goku said as he covered a sleepy guard's mouth with his hand. "But you could have also just knocked him unconscious." He then proceeded to slam his head against the wall and the short man fell to the floor in an undignified heap. "Like that."

Vegeta nodded. "Next time I'll see what I can do."

They moved on down the narrow side hall towards their first mission objective.

***

The previous day had left both Colby and Gohan mentally drained. Cyrus was a fast learner but even he couldn't learn at the pace he needed the understand the literature on the dragonballs. Gohan lay in the darkness of early morning feeling that maybe, just maybe, his situation was completely hopeless. ' _If it is, all I can say is shigata ga nai -- there is no help for it._ '

Based on Gohan's calculations, breakfast came everyday at approximately seven-thirty while he and Colby woke at about ten to fifteen minutes before. The pale yellow beam of a flashlight swept down the cell-lined hallway, passing over the frightened children as they sat inside.

"Gohan?" Colby whispered into the darkness. "Do you hear that? Someone's coming!"

The other boy listened closely for a moment and heard the soft footfalls making their way towards them. In fact, there were two sets. He sat up and quickly made his way to the steel bars. Something told him that everything was about to change.

"Those people coming aren't guards," he said very quietly to his friend. "They're walking too softly." He blinked as a beam of light hit his eyes and almost didn't believe what he saw after they had cleared.

"Gohan!" Goku exclaimed as he unlocked the cell door and pulled him into a tight hug. "Thank Kami I've found you."

He was stunned beyond belief, wide dark eyes just staring at his father. "T-tousan?" his mouth moved but no sound came out as if saying the words aloud would make his him disappear.

"I'm here Gohan," he said, still holding him tightly. "and Cyrus is going to pay for what he's done to you."

"Iie! You can't hurt him!" Gohan pulled away and looked up. "He doesn't really know what he's doing!"

Colby nodded as he stepped into the light. "He's right, Cyrus is a netball."

Saying nothing else, Goku pressed the ring of keys into his son's hand. The two boys immediately went off down the hall to free the other prisoners while the two men stood guard at the end of the hallway. The still-sleepy children walked slowly down the stone hall, rubbing at their eyes and almost not believing that they were being set free. Some did not speak the language of the land and had to be told by bilingual peers what exactly was going on. Giant smiles spread across all the children's' faces and Goku knew that rescuing them had been the right thing to do.

"Gohan, you take the other children to the elevator while we go and confront Cyrus," he motioned to Vegeta. "We'll be along in a little while."

He shook his head stubbornly and passed the keys to Colby to finish the job. "Iie. I refuse. Cyrus isn't evil, just a little disturbed. How can I give up on him knowing that he can change?"

"We don't have time for this," Vegeta muttered as he looked around. "I'm surprised it was allowed to go on for this long."

The boy nodded and fixed his father with a pleading look. "Promise me that you won't hurt him, Tousan. You've always taught me not to turn my back on those that need me. Are you going to turn your back on him now?"

Goku was a little annoyed that his own lesson had gotten thrown back into his face but he also knew that his son was right. Despite his kidnapping of children and murdering of innocents, Gohan must have seen something inside of Cyrus in the short time they had spent time together. It wouldn't be right for him to pass judgment on a man he didn't even know. Let Enma-sama take care of it. "I promise, Gohan-chan. Now please take the other children and leave this place. Cyrus will not be harmed."

"Domo arigatou," he bowed respectfully and led the others down the short hallway to freedom.

"What do we do, now?" Vegeta asked as his finger twitched slightly on the trigger guard. In the very short time he had listened to him, he could tell that Gohan was a very special little boy. Anyone who would kidnap him deserved to be killed in Vegeta's book. He was very close to outright begging Goku to allow him to dispatch Cyrus to the afterlife. It would be a fitting end to his sinful life.

"We talk to Master Cyrus," Goku said the title in a mocking tone of voice. "Then we get the hell out of here. I want to be back in Western Capital by tomorrow so that I can legally take custody of my son. ChiChi shouldn't have anything to do with his life."

"Goku, you're doing the same thing your ex-wife did. You could at least give her visitation rights. By doing so you're proving that you're a better person than she is."

He smiled at him. "Ah, you're right! Good idea, I think I'll do that."

Mission objective number two took precedence over Goku's revenge on ChiChi and they found Gohan standing before the door that obviously was Cyrus'.

"I can't leave without you. So I'm just going to have to go inside with you."

"But-" Goku immediately began to protest before Vegeta held up his hand to halt his words. The P. I. had a feeling he knew why Gohan didn't want to leave his father, he was afraid that if he let him out of his sight that he was going to disappear.

"You can come with us," Vegeta said. "I'm Vegeta by the way."

The boy smiled brightly and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Vegeta." He lowered his voice. "You love my tousan, don't you?"

He just stared at him for a moment before finally sputtering, "W-w-what did you just say?"

"It's in your eyes when you look at him, it's in your voice when you speak to him. You've fallen pretty hard."

He blushed slightly. "Um, I guess so. I don't really have anything to compare this to."

"He loves you too, Vegeta." His expression suddenly changed to once of fierce protection. "If you hurt him I'll hunt you down and castrate you with a dull butter knife."

Taken more than a little aback, he nodded and prayed to Kami that the little boy was just kidding. "I'll never hurt Goku. He doesn't deserve anything less than the best."

Gohan nodded and opened the door to Cyrus' bedroom. "I'm glad we've reached an understanding."

***

The large, king-sized bed only contained one slender body in the center. Cyrus was fast asleep with one arm flung over his eyes, loud snores filling the air. Goku and Vegeta hung back by the door while Gohan went over to wake the man up.

"Hey," he said softly while kneeling on the bed. "We need to speak with you."

Cyrus opened one eye, half hoping that it was Colby who was calling his name, and caught sight of Gohan's face above him. "Aw, it's you. What the hell do you want, kid?"

"It's what the hell *we* want," Vegeta answered for him, one hand placed lightly on the gun at his side. "And what we want is to talk to you."

Cyrus was immediately on his feet, Gohan scrambling to move out of his way. "Who are you? Is the damn security so bad that you two guys got in undetected?!"

The two men hovered on either side of the agitated Cyrus as Gohan looked on in silence. "I'm Gohan's father, Goku," he said. "This is Vegeta, private investigator and part-time bounty hunter."

His shoulders slumped in defeat. "You're going to turn me into the cops for the bounty, aren't you? Well, I've accepted the consequences of my actions a long time ago. I'm ready."

"I'm not takin' you anywhere," he spoke in his best urban accent. "What does a nutty mental patient like you get in prison? Screwed. Literally."

He blanched. "Oh my God."

"We're cutting you a deal," Gohan interrupted, not wanting the P. I. to frighten the man any more than he had to be. "If you disband your people they we'll allow you to go completely free. No prison time, no rape."

"That's all I have to do? Really?" He thought it was too good to be true -- and a little too simple. After the boy nodded he hit a button on a small intercom by his bedside that Gohan hadn't ever noticed before. "Aldrick, gather everyone in the dining hall. I've got an announcement to make."

"Hai, sir," was the response

Cyrus sighed and collapsed onto his bed, deep in thought. After a moment he raised his head and looked at the small group. "It's really over. Two men and a little boy come into my bedroom, demand that I give up everything I've ever worked hard for and I give in just like that."

Goku shrugged, firm with his belief that he had deserved it. "You just had the right motivation but if your group hasn't disbanded in one week then we're coming back and sparing no mercy. You got that?"

He nodded, fingers shifting slightly to rest near the hidden hilts of his knives. Vegeta saw the tiny movement and pointed his gun at his hand. "If you don't stop that right now you're going to be one body part lighter."

"He means it, Cyrus. I can tell." Gohan used his eyes to plead with him and the man's hands dropped down to rest at his sides. After looking at him for several moments longer, he turned and went through the door without another word. Goku and Vegeta followed, the latter keeping his eyes on him, leaving Cyrus alone in silence to think about his fate.


	8. Vengeance

It was the first time they had ever seen his two bedroom apartment, and Goku was pleased about the effect it had on them. The two boys and Vegeta stood still in the doorway just staring at the living room very quietly.

"What do you think?" he finally said after several moments. Gohan turned to his father and grinned.

"You have a lot of creativity," he said as he wandered around the room admiring how the gentle colors soothed his soul. "I like it."

"I'll give everyone the nickel tour," he said as he led them into the kitchen. "It's not that big."

The living room was themed in blue: navy carpet, navy curtains for the windows, and a navy sofa and easy chair. The pillows that sat in the corners of the sofa were medium blue with light blue stripes.

The kitchen was beige-and-white tile with white painted oak cabinets. There was a small oak table against one wall with matching chairs and the only appliances on the counter were a microwave and a coffee maker. He smiled sheepishly at the lack of food and drink in the fridge and motioned to the faucet. "I can always offer water."

"You and I are going grocery shopping later," Vegeta told him in a voice that allowed no arguments. "Chocolate chip ice cream isn't even real food."

"Hai, Okaasan," he said in a mock shameful voice. The boys laughed and the tour continued.

"My bedroom's on the right but this one here," he opened the door to the completely bare room on the left, "was always going to be Gohan's bedroom on the weekends. Since I've never gotten visitation rights it just stayed empty."

"It can still be mine Tousan," Gohan told him with a smile. "Kaasan's got to let me spend time with you."

"Why's that?"

"I could always call social services at any time and tell them how she neglects me. You know that she does." He sighed as he remembered the loneliness that still was threatening to overwhelm him at times. "I love kaasan, but she doesn't understand."

Goku frowned. "I'm not sure I understand either."

"He needs people to talk to and to just be around. Spending time with others makes him happy." Colby explained it simply, but he still helped the adults to see. "My parents are around all of the time, but they don't speak to me unless I've done something wrong. Then they yell." His home life had been torturous in his personal opinion. It was one thing to have strangers hurt you intentionally, but when people who were supposed to love you unconditionally continuously told you how much they hated you it created a pain so deep that nothing could ease it away. He felt it always as a dull ache in his chest that grew worse as he remembered his mother and father. They wouldn't care that he had run away and would have never tried to rescue him as Gohan's father had done. He envied his friend for having someone that cared.

"If you ever need kind words, advice, or a shoulder to cry on you can always call one of us." Goku gave him a hug that took a little of the dark chill from his soul. The small bit of comfort wouldn't heal him completely, but it was a start.

He looked at the three of them with tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. "Arigatou. I can't tell you how much that means to me." He wiped at his eyes and went to the bathroom for a tissue.

The phone's high-pitched rings interrupted the brief silence that had fallen over the remaining three after Colby's burst of emotion. Vegeta was the closest to the phone and picked it up on the third ring.

"Son residence." One black eyebrow rose and he shot a look at Goku. Covering the mouthpiece he said, "Some hysterical woman is asking for you. I assume that it's ChiChi."

"Let me get this one." Gohan took the phone from him and after releasing a deep breath he spoke. "Konnichi-wa Kaasan. How are you this afternoon?"

There was a startled pause and then a lot of half-sobbed, half-spoken words. "Gohan is it you? My baby's alive!"

"Hai, I am. Nothing bad happened to me and I made some new friends. Fellow prisoners you know."

ChiChi's voice came over the line tinged with confusion. "Who was the man that answered the phone? I've never heard him before."

"Vegeta is tousan's..... P. I. that he hired to find me. He's sort of like James Bond with all the equipment that he has. I like him, he's nice." The short Saiya-jin laughed at little at that. He had been called many things but nice had never been one of them. The most commonly used adjective was "scary".

"When are you coming home? I need to know so that I can prepare a big meal for everyone and clean the house from top-to-bottom. Would you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream, dear?"

"Kaasan?" he asked in a worried tone. "Can we afford all of this?"

"I'll find a way. Only the best for my little sweetie pie." Gohan scrunched his face at the newest cutesy term of endearment. She had never used many before.

"We took the other kids to the main police station here in Tokyo and tousan took custody of my friend and I. If everything goes well I should be back by tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward to your cooking, Kaasan. See you later."

"I'll be waiting for you. Ja, Gohan-chan." He hung up the phone with a relieved sigh. Gohan never knew that a single telephone conversation could be so draining.

"Did she sound very worried?" Goku asked him. "Was she crying?"

The boy nodded mutely while trying to hold back tears of his own. Causing his mother pain was the last thing he had wanted to do. The time it should have taken to Tokyo was short enough that he could have been calling her from the city mere hours from leaving the bus terminal. Certain people interfered with a routine trip and created a situation that left everyone in the world worried and filled with questions. Where would Cyrus strike next? Is my child safe from him? Is *any* child safe from him?

That train of thought led him directly to something he should have thought of a while ago. Cyrus had hurt Colby physically and his father was a doctor. It was only logical that he was checked out to see if any permanent damage had been done. It was such a small space and though Gohan knew it was possible, he just didn't see how anything could fit into it without damaging the fragile layers of tissue. He would speak to Colby as calmly as possible, and if that didn't work he would get on his knees and beg. Making sure that his friend was okay ranked higher than any shred dignity he possessed. To do anything less would be considered selfish.

"Colby?" he said quietly with a look to Vegeta. The man nodded and moved a far enough distance away to suit Gohan's needs. "Let my father examine you. Please."

"Back *there*?!" He was more than a little shocked... and embarrassed. "I don't even let my own mother see back there."

Gohan's eyes showed just how serious he was. "Cyrus is man-sized and you're just a kid. It had to have hurt you."

"I didn't feel anything until after," he looked down, fresh tears in his eyes. "But by then I was so ashamed and angry that I didn't really notice."

"Did you bleed?"

He shook his head. "Not after. He had so much of that crap in the needle that I didn't feel anything but numbness during." He shuddered as he remembered what he had seen the only time he opened his eyes. There had been a look of such intense delight on his face that it twisted Colby's stomach into knots. That image would haunt his nightmares for years to come, he was sure of it.

"Well," Gohan sighed, "if you won't let my tousan examine you then I'm going to have to. I'm just so scared that he really hurt you, Colby."

"Okay," he said finally after a moment's thought. "I trust you with my life, Gohan, more than anyone else in the world."

The two of them vanished into the aqua depths of the bathroom, neither noticing the look of pure rage on Vegeta's face. "That bastard is going to die as slowly as possible!" He swore it, on everything that made him the prince of the Saiya-jin. Goku turned to look at him with a strangely calm expression even though he had heard everything as clearly as Vegeta had. Searching the small drawer of his phone table he pulled an address book from it's depths.

"I guarantee his death," he said in an emotionless voice that contrasted greatly with Vegeta's righteous anger, "but first we need the right tools. A quick death isn't going to happen."

Vegeta nodded, the heat of his rage turned down to a slow boil. "I agree."

"There is a guy on the close by that knows everything there is to know about torture..."

***

Goku couldn't stop looking at Colby with worry in his eyes even though he knew it might upset him. Gohan did the right thing by asking him questions and he was deeply proud of his son. Vegeta noticed his agitation and gently squeezed the hand that was clenched tightly on the steering wheel of his SUV.

"We will stop him and get revenge," he said quietly. "Justice will be served." Goku nodded and went back to concentrating on the slick highway pavement.

It had begun raining while they were crossing the vast city of Tokyo, the rhythmic pattering lulling Colby in a deep, healing slumber. Gohan stayed awake long after his friend was dead to the world watching the scenery slide past his window. Vegeta silently watched him stare blankly from the rear-view mirror and wished that he could do or say something to make him feel better. Finally he spoke, but it didn't make the boy any happier.

"I heard, Gohan," he said quietly. "You did the right thing."

He looked at him in confusion. "How could you from across the room by the front door? We were near the hall and you were next to my tousan."

"Vegeta isn't ningen," Goku explained. "He's Saiya-jin."

"Really?" the boy asked with an interested expression. "We learned all about them in school last year. Do your people really live in the jungle?"

He nodded. "We take only what we need from the land, always giving something back. My father's the highest in the nation but I left to find my own path. Your destiny is what you make it, not what you inherit."

"You're Saiya-jin no ouji?" he asked, eyes wide. "There weren't any pictures in the book."

Vegeta nodded. "I overheard, though I didn't try to, and we have a plan to bring Cyrus to justice."

"Wait a minute, what did you say? Are you going to kill him?!" His voice rose uncontrollably and made Colby stir restlessly. He quieted himself and settled for an extremely angry look.

"This isn't open for discussion, Gohan," he father said even while indecision upset his stomach. "He hurt Colby and therefore should pay for his crime."

"Insanity is legal to plead in a courtroom, tousan. Are you going to deny Cyrus that right?"

"That man isn't insane! He knew full well what the hell he was doing!" Just the thought of Cyrus' crime made Goku's blood boil and profanity slip through.

"We will find him and kill him." Vegeta told Gohan. "End of discussion."

Nothing more was said until Goku pulled into the driveway of Gohan's home.

***

The man that Goku knew lived in an abandoned factory that he had partially converted into a home on the western edge of Eastern Capital. The heavy steel door was flanked on both sides by burly guards dressed in black who could barely even cross their arms over their bulging muscles. Vegeta raised an eyebrow at the tight security and tossed a sideways look at his companion.

"They prevent rescues," Goku explained and then there were no more questions.

The front room was dark wood furniture with burgundy upholstery, not at all what Vegeta had been expecting. Actually ancient stone was a lot closer, but it would have to be liberally coated with life blood in order for it to match his mental image.

A tall man with a orange bandanna tied around his bald head stood leaning against a doorway with a pleasant look on his face. "Son Goku! Long time no see. How's life in the medical field?"

"Same old, same old but I'm not here to exchange pleasantries." He carefully kept his face blank so that it matched the look on the other man's face. "I need your expertise, Ten."

Tenshinhan's demeanor changed as fast as a ningen could blink. He was suddenly all business, motioning Vegeta and Goku into his office with a callused hand. "Let's talk, then. There are many available options to choose from."

"Who are you?" Vegeta blurted, not one for polite questioning.

Ten smiled and tapped himself on the chest. "I am me."

"*What* are you then?"

"My profession is simple. I punish people for the wrongs they have committed based on what my clients ask for. I also assassinate upon request."

"Skills like the ones Goku has spoken of can't be learned from just anywhere." He was certain of it. Tenshinhan had a style that he had seen somewhere before, possibly in eastern Europe.

"No, they can't," he agreed. "I am a former court assassin and torturer of a small country no longer in existence. The king was too squeamish to preside over things himself, so I did them in his place. I have seen many, many different kinds of styles but those of ancient China interest me the most."

"I was looking for something that would keep a man alive and in pain for a short while but nothing overly messy." Goku fidgeted just a little bit but the other two men both noticed. Vegeta laid a hand on his knee and Tenshinhan's faint smile grew amused.

"You are not a killer, Son Goku. Your conscience still bothers you. I would let the one beside you do the work, he has seen a lot."

"How do you know that?" Vegeta asked, a little nervous that Ten had accurately read him.

"Your eyes are jaded, filled with the sights that you have observed. Goku's eyes are empty of shadows, he has never witnessed the agonizing pain of suffering."

"I have seen people suffer," Goku said softly. "You have never seen true suffering until it's done by those who haven't even begun their lives. Not all the children I take care of make it, you know. The kids who are terminally ill just touch something deep inside of me and I grow closer to them than to any other child. When they die it hurts almost more than anything else in the world but I move on and don't let death hold me back. The reason why I don't have shadows is because what I have seen of death doesn't haunt me. I just embrace it as a normal part of life."

Tenshinhan let a true smile cross his face for the first time. "You have the first pure heart I have ever seen. In a world where innocence and kindness hardly ever exist anymore you still hold on to hope. Amazing."

"What can I do to extract revenge but does not involve torture?"

"There are various chemicals that makes the person delusional for a short while, but while physical pain will eventually fade, mental pain goes on forever."

"He doesn't want to permanently scar the man mentally, just make him feel sorry for what he's done." Vegeta gave Ten a hopeful look. "Isn't there a way to make someone feel weak and helpless? That would definitely punish Cyrus for his actions."

The other man froze. "Did you say Cyrus? As in *the* Cyrus, master of all things illegal?"

"Hai," Goku replied. "He kidnapped my son, and after hiring Vegeta to track him down we went after him. He raped a child, Ten. I want him to pay for that."

Ten looked at him with the most neutral expression that he could manage. "Was it your son?"

"Do you actually think I'll be here right now instead of standing over his mutilated corpse?" he asked without the slightest trace of humor. "Morals be damned."

Vegeta explained. "It was a friend of Gohan's. I think they met during the incident."

"I see," he said as he got up from his chair. "There is something I have that seems to be working well. Follow me please."

To one side of the large room was a dark curtain that Vegeta hadn't noticed before. Ten swept it aside to reveal a metal door that he pulled out a key from his shirt pocket to unlock. Down a narrow flight of steps they went, the stone walls pressed in on either side and feeling cool to the touch. There was yet another door at the bottom and this one was locked electronically.

"You never show anyone your chambers, Ten. What made you change your mind?"

"Cyrus' reign of terror and intimidation has gone on for far too long. It's time someone who has power to do something about it. You two can succeed."

Then they went through the doorway and Vegeta's questions trailed off into startled silence.


	9. Where Did the Master Go?

True to her word ChiChi did have a delectable feast waiting for them upon arrival. All of Gohan's absolute favorite dishes had been prepared and she had even made him a special desert. After a quiet meal that even Goku and Vegeta had stayed for, she brought out the strawberry cheesecake and two kinds of ice cream. Gohan thought that everything was completely unnecessary but Colby had a good time, and he accepted it if only for that reason. It was late when his father and Vegeta decided to leave and Gohan was very close to begging them to take them along. One look at his mother's face made him change his mind. It was as if she fully expected him to ask and was resigning herself to the inevitability of it. Gohan surprised her buy simply hugging the two men goodbye and stepping away from the door.

"When can I see you again, tousan?" he asked with a slightly trembling voice. ' _I will not cry, I will not cry._ '

"I have a few loose ends to tie up but we'll all get together next week for a trip to the amusement park. Would you like that?" He spoke to both boys, already treating Colby as one of his own. After making a few arrangements the door was shut and silence loomed over them all.

Gohan could tell that his mother was anxious to put the final touches on a paper that was going to be due very soon. Her eyes kept sliding to the open doorway to the dining room where her lap top lay on the end of the table.

He smiled. "Kaasan, Colby and I will be in my room okay?" She nodded with a slight exhale of breath, happy that she would get back to work.

"What was that all about?" Colby asked with a confused expression.

"Do you remember when I said that my kaasan was trying to become a professor?" Gohan asked as he shut the door to his room. The two of them took seats on his bed with its plaidcomforter. "There's this final paper you have to write that has something to do with what you're majoring in before you can get your doctorate. and kaasan's been working on it for weeks now. Monday is when she has to hand it in so she'll be perfecting it for a while until then."

"Oh." Colby was suddenly a loss for what to say and blurted the first thing that came to mind. "How's your ear?"

Gohan blinked. "Huh?"

"The new hole you have, how is it?"

He touched his left ear gently and winced. "Sore. I think it's infected. That man wasn't exactly a professional." Gohan was glad that his hair was long enough to hide his newly pierced ear, it would be terrible if ChiChi had a heart-attack so soon after his rescue.

"I was lucky I already had my hole," he said as he examined his red ear closely. "Where do you keep the alcohol? That should get rid of the pain."

After taking care of Gohan's infection the two boys talked pretty late into the night about everything under the sun. School, families, hobbies -- life itself. Around eleven ChiChi stuck her head inside of her son's room (without knocking first, of course) and informed them that it was time for all little boys to be in bed asleep. They grumbled a little as all children do, but eventually brushed their teeth and climbed into Gohan's double bed. ChiChi gave them both a good-night kiss and pulled the door shut, intending on going back to work until the wee hours of the morning.

"Gohan?" Colby whispered into the darkness. "When I leave tomorrow will you write to me?"

He patted his hand and smiled. "Of course I will. Something's odd about our friendship, Colby. It's beyond even best friends but I don't have anything to describe it." He felt the other boy let out the breath he had been holding ever since the word "odd" had come from his mouth. "I didn't mean for you to get upset. I like the way it feels."

For a moment he thought that Colby was going to start sobbing again but after a few moments of shaking he got himself under control. In a voice that was only slightly thick with tears he said, "Ai shiteru, Gohan."

"Ai shiteru, Colby. Sleep well."

For a short while after Colby dropped off, Gohan thought of the emotions that he was feeling now that his father was gone... again. He was angry at his mother for not allowing his father to share custody but his nearly overwhelming anguish that left his body feeling cold. It was similar to what he felt that half-remembered day two years ago when his parents' divorce became final.

_"Tousan, why are you leaving?" he had asked, face clouded with confusion. "Did I do something bad?"_

_Goku kneeled before the boy and just held him for a moment. "Iie, Gohan. You could never do anything that would make me leave. Your kaasan and I just don't get along anymore. I don't want you to grow up with us fighting all of the time."_

_Innocent dark eyes looked at him with partial understanding. "You don't like kaasan anymore. She makes you yell."_

_"Well, hai but that doesn't mean that I dislike her now. We just don't get along anymore."_

_"If you go," he said with a stubborn fold of his arms, "I go too. I love you, tousan."_

_He sighed unhappily and wished that he could take his son with him but by working the night shift he would never be home just in case something happened. There was nothing he could do._

_"You can come visit me on the weekends and then we'll have fun together." He hugged him one final time and looked up to see ChiChi standing in the doorway that bridged the living room and the dining room. Goku saw her narrow her eyes and knew that nothing good would come from that movement. "I love you Gohan, never forget that."  
_

Through both the bad times and the good one thing was his motivation, his comfort, and his salvation.

His father's unconditional love.

***

Tenshinhan's torture chambers were filled with the prisoners he was paid by various people to capture. Some knew full well his motive for holding them while others were clueless, but all knew that their chances of getting out alive were slim to nil. The air of defeat hung over the beaten ones, the scarred ones, the bloody ones; but an air of hope still hung over the untouched ones. It wouldn't be there for much longer; Ten was too good at his job.

Someone was mumbling over and over again about how nothing was his fault and nearly each word was punctuated by a scream. Vegeta's nerves couldn't take much more of the sights and sounds of Tenshinhan's dungeon and flinched very slightly as a scream sounded as he passed his cell. Goku, who hadn't looked the least bit disturbed, paled very slightly and put an arm around the short Saiya-jin's shoulders.

"We'll leave and never have to come back to see or hear this," he whispered. "I promise you that." Vegeta nodded and squeezed his hand.

Ten led them straight to one of the larger holding cells in the back and revealed his storage room. Against one wall were the blades, against yet another were the whips, against the back wall sat the chemicals and drugs on worn wooden shelves. The torturer picked up a basket from a nearby table and began taking various corked bottles from the shelves and placing them inside. None were labeled but both Vegeta and Goku would bet their lives that each one would get the job done right.

"Delusions are easy to cause by creating a temporarily imbalance of the chemicals in his mind. His worst fears would become reality and by adding another drug he would be as helpless as a newborn babe. Just tell me how long you want everything to last and I'll fix you up."

A glance passed between the two men and Goku spoke. "Two hours."

Tenshinhan took small quantities of two powers and mixed them together in a vial before adding water. The third was liquefied before being added to the first mixture and after placing the stopper into the vial and shaking it to make sure everything was properly mixed, he asked another question.

"Why not just let me handle everything and allow the death of Cyrus? He's benefiting no one by staying in this world."

"Gohan asked me not to," Goku said, "and he has an uncanny way of judging a person's character and worth."

He handed him the vial and replaced the powders back onto the shelves. "I see." He waved away Goku's checkbook and said, "No payment necessary. I have repaid your earlier kindness."

Ten saw them to his front door and let them out with a few final words.

"I hope you don't come to regret your decision."

Vegeta correctly read the look in Goku's eyes and spoke for him. "So do we."

***

He was gone, just gone. There was nothing left behind except furniture and the entire place was devoid of inhabitants. Goku slammed his fist into the nearest brick wall in anger and Vegeta stood there in surprise as a hole appeared. He didn't think any ningen could be as strong as a Saiya-jin.

"Where the hell did he go?" Goku asked no one as he paced the floor endlessly. "He must have known that we would find out about Colby and come back."

"Maybe," Vegeta said. He turned to an almost empty bookcase and picked up one of the books that had been thrown to the floor. " _The Legend of the Dragonballs._ "

Goku's head jerked up and he stared at the book title in absolute shock. "He had books about the dragonballs. This is definitely worse than I thought."

"Nani? Dooshite?" He flipped through the pages. "What are dragonballs?"

"Dragonballs are seven magical objects that once brought together can grant you any one wish in the world." He pulled out his cell phone and address book. "It might take him forever without the proper equipment, but then again, neither of us have any idea what he has. I have a friend in Western Capital that created a device to locate them as a science project. She'll help us."

Vegeta wondered how come he had never heard of any genius scientist that created things like radar to locate dragonballs as Goku dialed a number. He also distantly wondered what she would be like. All thoughts of the unknown woman fled his mind when Goku said one name.

"Konnichi-wa, can I speak to Bulma?"

_Bulma, a woman he had met a while ago when he was just starting out in the P. I. business. At the end of a long day of absolutely no customers he had gone to a bar a few short blocks away. Drink after drink he had downed, depressed that he wasn't making it too well on his own. Then she had taken a seat next to him at the bar and his life took an unexpected turn._

_"Bad day?" she'd asked after counting the numerous glasses that sat in front of him. He had merely stared at her for a few moments before grunting. Bulma had laughed and said that she herself wasn't unfamiliar with the crappy days. They had a few drinks together and that's the point when the rest of the night became hazy._

_Vegeta knew that he had sex with her in a motel room, but the entire thing was fairly boring. He had never been with anyone before her and she taught him a few things he never knew existed. After everything was over she had just gathered up her things and left with no words at all. He had wondered for a long time what he had done wrong to make her behave that way and eventually came to the conclusion that she was just a bitch.  
_

He had completely put her out of his mind until now. Goku was finalizing some arrangements with her and he definitely had no desire to see Bulma Briefs in her own house. He quickly thought up an excuse as to why he couldn't go along and silently prayed that it worked.

"I have to check up on things back at my apartment, Goku, but I will see you tomorrow after you get the radar thing." He wrote down his address and phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to him. "I, um, hope to see you soon." His cheeks warmed and he cursed himself for acting like a teenager.

Goku thought his blush was cute but knew better to comment on it. "Will nine work for you?"

Vegeta smiled. "It's perfect."

They chatted the entire drive back to Tokyo, getting to know each other even better. Vegeta came to know a side of Goku that he rarely let people see and Goku came to know that Vegeta was sweet person deep down inside. The short Saiya-jin was reluctant to leave Goku once the other man had pulled to a stop in front of his apartment building but he also knew that he couldn't see Bulma and not do anything stupid. He hesitated with his hand on the door handle, debating whether or not he should kiss him good night. Goku was the one who closed the gap between them and placed a gentle kiss on his lips.

"We have to go on a date sometime, after this is all over." His hand caressed his cheek almost absently. "I like you Vegeta, more than I've ever liked anyone before. Including ChiChi."

He didn't know what to say. Of course he was touched but Vegeta had no experience with replies to romantic words. So, the only thing that came from his mouth was "Arigatou."

Standing at the curb watching Goku drive off was a very hard thing for him to do. He felt a bond with him so strong that it seemed that it should be visible for all to see. That thought made his blood run slightly cold as he thought of something Saiya-jin in his former country tended to fear. The bonding of two Saiya-jin was mental and emotional as well as physical. They eventually grew to love each other so deeply that being without their mate for even a short time caused depression. Thoughts and emotions are shared without saying a word and the death of a mate causes death for the surviving partner. Vegeta was downright terrified of the Bonding because the thought of not having complete control over everything about himself made him afraid. Goku understood that, but he didn't understand the Bond.

Vegeta's apartment was usually his safe haven from the chaos that was the outside world but now he didn't want to be left alone with his thoughts. Was it so horrible to be bonded to Son Goku? The other man was kind and intelligent, definitely not a bad choice of person to spend the rest of his life with. He had heard of some Saiya-jin that were bonded to disgusting, pathetic people. He was one of the lucky ones.

The phone was ringing as he turned the key in the lock and he knew without looking at the caller-id that it was Goku. His face broke out into a smile and he answered cheerfully, all traces of his earlier mood forgotten.

"I miss you," Goku said in a voice that warmed Vegeta's entire body. "You can't know how much."

"Oh I do know. I feel it." He sighed. "The entire thing's sort of complicated, it's a Saiya-jin thing." That made him blink. How was he bonded to a ningen? He had never heard of the Bond happening between a Saiya-jin and someone of another race. "Goku, are you absolutely sure that you're completely ningen?"

"Iie, not really. My ojiichan said that he found me in the forest when I was a small child. He didn't know where I came from or what my name really is. So he called me Goku, or monkey, because I had a tail."

"Oh my God," he whispered. "It *is* the Bond!"

"The what?"

"You're Saiya-jin, Goku, and the Bond is the bane of our existence."

He didn't even dispute the fact that he was now Saiya-jin. "Why? What's so bad about it, Vegeta?"

"Imagine having something you loved so much that you never wanted to be parted with it. Then you lose it and can never find it again. How would you feel?"

"It depends on if I can replace it or not."

"You can't. Nothing can ever replace your beloved object."

He grew quiet for a moment, so quiet that Vegeta could only hear his soft breathing. "We're bonded."

"Hai," he exhaled in defeat. "We are."

"You don't sound too happy about it."

Vegeta was developing a pounding headache and a upset stomach from worrying about his... What could he call Goku now? Friend or boyfriend didn't cover what he meant to him. Goku was his life-mate, partner for all eternity. "I worry about you now because I know that if you should die I would be right behind you. That scares me, Goku."

"Think of it this way, koi. All of the goods things about the Bond seem to outweigh the bad. I love sharing this with you and I know that you feel the same way. If I should die... Well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it.  _Ai shiteru_ , Vegeta-chan."

" _Ai shiteru_ , Goku."


	10. A Wish Upon the Dragonballs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Children have more complex emotions than most people think. Many adults say the kids don't understand the concept of love but I think they simplify it while adults just complicate things way more than they need to be. Children don't worry about if their love is proper or reciprocated. They just love you unconditionally.
> 
> Gohan, at this point in the series, only loves Colby as a very good friend. That may change in the future, but then again it may not. Hopefully this clears up a few things (I'll get to why I chose this title in the epilogue).

The phone was ringing very early in the morning, waking Gohan from a sound sleep. After it rang over four times he knew that his mother wasn't home and reached over Colby to pick up his extension. The sound of his father's voice made him happy but he knew by the tone that he wasn't calling about anything good.

"How are you doing this morning, Gohan?" he asked, loud talking in the background. "I'm calling to give you some news but I can't tell you if it's good or bad."

Colby cracked open one eye and cast a questioning look at his friend. "Where are you, Tousan?"

"Tokyo International Airport." A voice announced a flight and Goku said something to someone else. "Cyrus got away and he's going after the dragonballs. Based on my friend's device two of them are in Europe. I have to get at least one of them before he does."

"I understand. Tell Vegeta that I said hi and I'll see you two later."

"Hopefully this'll all be over soon and we can spend some time together." The voice repeated the announcement and Vegeta said something to him. "I've go to go before I miss my flight. I love you, Gohan."

"Love you too, Tousan. Ja." He replaced the receiver and sighed. "Vegeta and tousan's going to Europe to find the dragonballs before Cyrus. He left last night."

"I hope they find him and kill him," the other boy said very seriously. "Cyrus doesn't deserve to live another day."

"Colby, I hate what he did to you but I don't hate the man himself. Besides, no one has any idea of what he's going to wish for anyway. What if it's something good?"

Colby got to his feet with a huge yawn and started off to the bathroom. "What if it's not? No one's willing to risk everything just because he *might* be harmless now." The doorbell rang just as he had stepped into the hallway and he went to Gohan's bedroom window to see who it was. His parents were standing there on the front porch and he quickly backed away from the window. "Shit!"

"Who is it?" Gohan asked as he walked over to the window.

"Tell them I'm not here, tell them you don't know me," he whispered from near the doorway. "Better yet, let's pretend no one's home and maybe they'll just go away." ' _They don't really care about me so why are they here?_ '

"My mother's pulling into the driveway," Gohan sighed. "She'll let them in."

He quickly began putting back on his clothes and he shoes and took off for the kitchen and the backdoor. "God no! I'll be around, Gohan. See you later!"

"Colby Stephenson, where do you think you're going?" His mother's stern voice floated to him, freezing the boy in the middle of the kitchen floor with a terrified expression on his face. He kept his back to his parents and ChiChi in the doorway but couldn't keep himself from trembling very slightly. No one noticed except Gohan and he looked over Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson from the doorway.

He instantly didn't like them for numerous reasons. What did they do to his friend to make him so afraid of them? Why hadn't they reported his kidnapping to the police immediately instead of waiting for the rescue to become public on yesterday's news? Why were Mr. Stephenson's fingers twitching on his belt as if he were anxious to punish his son for leaving home in the first place?

"What did you do to him?" Gohan asked as he stepped around the couple and stood before them, blocking the way to their son. That was when ChiChi noticed Colby's behavior and she moved just a little bit closer to her son, showing support for his actions.

"We did nothing more than parents have the right to do, boy." His father said harshly. "That includes disciplining my son when he does anything wrong."

"It's okay Gohan," he said quietly as he slowly turned around to face his parents. "I'll go with them."

ChiChi glared at Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson and began to herd them back towards the front door. "Get out of my house! Now!"

"We'll be back, Mrs. Son, and we will bring the cops with us." Mrs. Stephenson gathered up her dignity and strode from the room with her husband trailing after. ChiChi saw them to the front door and made sure they got into their car and drove away.

"They'll return, Gohan. Are you sure they did something bad to him?"

"I'm positive," he said while walked over to his friend. "Do you have scars from them? More than just mental ones?" Colby nodded, holding in his tears by force of will alone. "We need to see them, please."

"Iie," he said in a choked voice while shaking his head. "I can't let anyone see. He said he would kill me if I did." He wrapped his arms around himself and backed away. "Please don't make me show you!"

ChiChi's eyes narrowed in anger as Gohan pulled Colby into a comforting hug. "That's all the proof that I need," she said while picking up the kitchen phone. "I'm calling the police."

"You can't! Son-san, you don't know what my otousan and okaasan are capable of! More than one person has gotten murdered because they pissed them off." He began ticking the unfortunate victims off on his fingers. "My aunt, Misako, when she didn't pay back money she had borrowed, the mailman when they thought he stole a check out the mail box, the principal of my school when he said that the reason I was getting low grades was because I wasn't being helped at home..."

"Did they do it themselves or did they hire someone?" Gohan asked with wide eyes.

He shrugged. "I have no clue but I wouldn't put it past them to have blood on their hands. I'll just go with them the next time they come back and every thing will be okay for you guys again."

"You are not going back to them, Colby, and that's that!" Gohan put his foot down in a manner much like his mother. ChiChi looked worriedly at them for a moment until the police picked up the other line.

"This is Son ChiChi at 621 Cherry Blossom Drive and I have a problem that requires police assistance." She paused and then a frown creased her brow. "Hai, I'll hold."

"The police put you on hold?!" Gohan asked in a shocked voice. "That is not acceptable."

"Gohan, hush!" She gave him a look that made him back away involuntarily. "I have a little boy here that's been abused by his parents." At the word "abused" Colby's eyes teared up. ChiChi nodded a few times and then she put her hand over the mouthpiece. "In order for your parents to be charged they need physical evidence like scars. Strangers are going to take photographs for the trial, Colby. If you say no then we'll drop the entire thing."

"Go ahead Son-san," he whispered. "I don't love them anyway." He left the room and Gohan took a few steps forward to go after him.

"He needs to be alone now," ChiChi said. "To think." She went back to the phone, explaining what Colby had told her about his parents.

Gohan took a seat at the kitchen table, intensely worried about his friend. How would it feel to be beaten almost every day of his life? He had no idea but he knew that Colby had to be a very strong boy in order to survive it all.

His own mother wasn't the best but he never realized just how bad "the worst" was. You hear about things on television or read them in the newspaper, but until you saw a living, breathing person who had experienced the pain it all seemed so distant and unreal. Sure, you knew it was awful, but until it happened to someone you knew personally it wasn't truly horrific.

The sound of the screen door closing surprised him for a moment but soon he was on his feet and running off to the living room. He had to make sure that Colby didn't do anything hasty.

***

The plane was pretty crowded for an early morning flight. Vegeta and Goku sat next to each other, the larger man on the aisle, and settled themselves in for the several hour long trip to France. The miles from the current location was displayed on Bulma's Dragonball Radar but it didn't tell you exactly where it was or the direction you had to go. After driving a mile in each compass direction he figured out that he needed to go west and it was located somewhere in the country of France.

"Is there a movie on this flight?" Vegeta asked with a bored yawn. He could already imagine himself staring out of the window at the clouds or staring at Goku. While the other man was aesthetically pleasing to the eye that, too, could get tedious.

"Without something to do you get bored, don't you?" Goku asked while examining the radar. "There isn't a movie but I brought stuff."

He suspected that the other man's taste in reading material was vastly different from his own. "Oh? Um... arigatou." He dug in the bag Goku had in his lap and discovered a lot more than Reader's Digest. Vegeta grinned and settled down to his comic book. "Lots of blood and gore, just how I like 'em."

Goku smiled back at him. "I had a feeling you would."

They landed in Paris slightly sooner than expected and nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the flight except the pocket or turbulence they hit that caused the plane to rock and Vegeta's face to pale. Goku had just held on to his hand, reassuring him that everything was going to be fine. Dying in a plane crash wasn't one of his favorite ways to go [comma] but if he had no other choice then it would do.

The two of them took a taxi out of the city and into the countryside with Goku muttering about the radar, hoping that it wasn't broken. Between Paris and Versailles the radar suddenly stopped beeping and Goku pressed the button on the top.

"What's wrong with this thing? It was fine back in Tokyo."

Vegeta could tell that he was becoming frustrated. "Here, let me see." He examined the screen for a moment before pressing the button several times. Three small glowing dots were moving at a rapid pace towards another glowing dot over nineteen-hundred miles away. "It's not here anymore. Cyrus already has it, the one from Japan, and two more."

"Damn it!" Goku pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It hadn't taken him long to figure out based on the mileage displayed on the dragonball radar approximately where in each country a dragonball was located. The one in Japan was gone before they had even left, the same thing must have happened to the one in France. Another one had been in Ireland, one more in Egypt. "He left earlier than we thought, maybe even a few hours after we'd taken the kids away."

"What do we do now?"

Goku sighed. "It makes no sense to try and catch him at the next dragonball so we're going to have to head off to Hawaii. It's a hell of a lot closer than Australia." He pulled his cell phone from his pocket to call ahead to the airport for two more plane tickets and it was taken from him by Vegeta.

"Let me do that, you look like you're about to scream in frustration." Goku gave him a grateful smile and continued to stare at the radar.

"There goes another one," he said softly. "Cyrus has six now."

Vegeta finalized things and hung up. "We're going to get there before he does, Goku. Count on it." He flagged down a passing car on the small, two-lane highway and spoke briefly to the woman before she would give them a ride back to Paris.

"When we get back to Japan we're taking a vacation," Goku decided. "How does a cabin in the middle of a completely deserted forest sound?"

"Will it have gory comic books?" Vegeta asked with a grin.

He smiled. "It can have anything you want."

"As long as it has you then I'm fine." He hugged him briefly and slid into the leather-covered backseat of the woman's car with Goku close behind him.

***

"Colby, where are you?" Gohan called out as he examined every tree and bush in his yard. "Please don't be doing anything potentially death-causing."

He heard one sniffle then another. Before Gohan could even think, he was running towards the sound and hoping that he wasn't too late. ' _Don't do it, Colby! I... need you._ '

"Colby, say something!" He stopped at the base of a beech tree in his front yard, searching. The small sniffle came again and he looked up to see his friend seated among the branches. "You're not dead!"

"Sorry about worrying you."

Gohan grabbed the trunk of the tree in both hands and attempted to gain a good foothold. When none were forthcoming he moved around to the other side and found something that held his weight. After two false starts he finally made it up and collapsed by Colby's side.

"How did you climb this thing?" he asked while examining his scraped hands. "I've never been able to before."

"I wasn't really paying attention, I just needed someplace to go." He took one of Gohan's hands and began examining it for cuts. The small action successfully took his mind the potential impact of his next words. "As soon as my mom or dad stopped h-hurting me I would go to the backyard and find my special tree. I would hide in it until they went to sleep though sometimes that took hours." He released the hand he had been holding and grasped the other one. "Sitting up there, looking around the neighborhood, almost made me forget what had happened to me."

Gohan looked at him, tears in his eyes. "You will never, *ever* have to go back to that house again. I promise you that."

"Arigatou, Gohan," he said softly while pulling the other boy to him for a hug.

"For what?"

"For caring enough to help me and for just being my friend."

The two of them sat among the tree's sturdy branches in each other's arms until ChiChi came outside looking for them.

***

They had rented a motorcycle at the airport and sped off to where the dragon radar was indicating. Vegeta was driving though he hadn't ever even touched a motorcycle before but after driving at a low speed for a short while he soon got the hang of it.

"Turn right at this next intersection!" Goku shouted above the roar of the wind. "We're really close!"

The small street they turned onto was lined with flowering bushes so thick the perfume was making Vegeta's nose itch. He maneuvered the motorcycle carefully and braked to a stop at Goku's tap on his shoulder. Only a short twenty feet from the road began white sand and Vegeta could already imagine the ache in his shoulders and back from digging.

"I'm sorry that we're going to have to do this," Goku said while releasing two shovels from their capsule. He used the point of his shovel to draw a circle in the sand, indicating that the dragonball was going to be somewhere inside of it. "It's a nice place for a vacation, though."

Vegeta shook his head and began his task. "Not for me it isn't. If I ever come back all I'm going to be able to think about is how much I had to dig." Goku laughed in response, beginning a semi-long stretch of companionable silence that would last until either one of them found the dragonball or Cyrus unexpectedly showed up. They were prepared for both eventualities.

Goku dug his shovel deep into the sand for what seemed like the millionth time. The sun had sank slightly in the sky, for that he was glad, but fatigue, thirst, and hunger were catching up with him. The sudden collision with something underneath the sand surprised him. "Did I-?" He asked as he dropped to his knees. Vegeta kneeled beside him and both began moving away the sand with their hands. The small sphere of the seven-star dragonball appeared to them and equally huge grins broke out on both men's faces.

"We found it before he did!" Vegeta exclaimed, seeing for the first time what a dragonball looked like in real-life. A shadow appeared over the two of them and Cyrus grinned as he grabbed the dragonball from the sand.

"Thanks for the help you two but I'll just be taking that now." He was running away from them before Vegeta and Goku could react. An idle motorcycle was waiting for him, conveniently turned back towards Honolulu. He hopped on it, dragonball securely placed into a saddlebag, and rode off in a cloud of thick dust.

"I'll drive!" Goku shouted as the two of them ran towards their cycle, shovels lying forgotten on the ground. "This chase is going to be tricky and I need you to follow him with the radar."

As Vegeta seated himself securely behind Goku, one arm wrapped around his waist, the sky suddenly darkened as if it were night and a fierce wind picked up. Vegeta was a little nervous about that, although he would only admit it to himself, and jumped slightly when thunder and lightning were making themselves known. What the hell was going on? A storm didn't usually come from clear blue sky. Goku tensed underneath his arm and Vegeta knew then that Cyrus was calling the Eternal Dragon, Shenlon.

' _We're going to be too late._ ' Vegeta said sadly to himself. He didn't know what Cyrus was going to wish for but the odds were that it wasn't going to be good.

' _Don't give up just yet, Vegeta-chan. We may make it._ '

Vegeta nodded before it hit him that Goku didn't say a word aloud. He felt the other man's body shake as he laughed and then they, by the information displayed on the radar's screen, they were going off road into a semi-dense grove of palm trees. Goku was a skilled rider, however, and they didn't even come close to colliding with anything.

At the edge of a cliff surrounded by palm trees in a semi-circle Cyrus stood before the seven glowing dragonballs and the very large serpentine form of Shenlon. Goku braked quickly and Vegeta was running towards Cyrus before he had even come to a complete stop. They both knew that it was too late but it still didn't hurt to try.

"It is done," the dragon uttered. "I bid you farewell." A bright light blinded them all as the dragonballs rose up above the ground and sped off to different locations around the globe. When they were once again able to see and when the sky and the weather had once again returned to their normal state, Cyrus dropped to his knees with tears slowly sliding down his cheeks. It wasn't quite the reaction Vegeta and Goku had expected.

He looked up as he saw the shadows approached and smiled sadly. "You can go ahead and kill me now, I've completed my task. But I can't say that I won't regret not being able to see firsthand what my wish caused."

Goku crouched beside him partially concerned and partially curious. "What did you wish for, Cyrus?"

"I told your son two days ago that a lot of lives depended on that wish. Mine included." He exhaled tiredly. "I come from a small town in the Australian outback where we've had to struggle for what little we had our entire lives. A few weeks ago this weird sickness came through our town, something no one had ever seen before. The doctors couldn't pin down its origin so that a cure could be found so the first people who caught it died within a week from great pain." He fell silent for a moment but soon went on.

"My mother was one of the first people who caught it. She was getting on in years and her immune system wasn't strong enough for resistance. I stayed by her bedside every single day talking with her and saying that everything was going to be fine, that the docs would come up with a cure." Fresh tears fell from his closed eyes. "I had been lying to both myself and my mother but she knew that she wasn't going to last very long. That very same day I discovered that I, too, harbored some of the sickness inside of myself. The doctor only gave me four weeks at the most to live.

"It was sunny the day she died and I remember yelling at the gods in Heaven for being disrespectful to my grief. A cloudy day full of rain would have been more appropriate for my mood but I thought back later to the nice day and felt that it was trying to tell me something. So I asked the elders about the legends of our people and there were several about the great dragonballs that can grant any wish in the world. I thought to myself that day, 'If I can prevent this tragedy from happening to anyone else then I would be changing the world just a little bit for the better.'

"For long months I searched for the dragonballs and after discovering that the books my men found weren't useful to me, I became sidetracked by my ambition to have everything that I could never have before. All the riches of the world were suddenly available to me, all I had to do was steal them."

He looked up, a contented smile on his face. "So that was my wish, guys. I asked Shenlon if he could cure those with the illness and completely wipe away any trace of it from the world. I'm so happy that it was granted." He got to his feet, a peaceful expression on his face. "Go ahead and kill me. I'm ready."

Goku only threw up his hands and walked away from the cliff in silence. Vegeta looked over his shoulder at him and then smiled. "Don't worry about it, Cyrus, he can't kill you now but we weren't going to in the first place since Gohan asked us not to. He judged your character pretty accurately I'd say." He turned around and startled the other man with the stern expression on his face. "But if you *ever* kidnap, rape, or murder anyone again, nothing you could ever do will save you from the most gruesome death imaginable." He then patted him on the shoulder and walked towards Goku. "Have a nice day."

Cyrus watched the two of them ride away into the setting sun and knew that he would indeed not do anything illegal for the rest of his life. As his favorite uncle Frederick would have said, "Those are two *very* scary mother fuckers."


	11. There's No Place Like Home

Gohan sat at his desk writing in his journal for school, remembering all of what happened only five short weeks ago. His eighth birthday had come and gone and Colby had moved away. The day his father had moved back into the house to try and repair his marriage gave him mixed feelings. He knew that he was only trying for his sake and that made him feel guilty. His father should be with the one he really loved instead of stuck in Satan City with his first family.

Colby called him often to tell him some news or just to say hello. His aunt had taken him in, far away from his parents, but her home was in northern capital. The collect calls were often expensive but neither ChiChi nor Goku minded paying.

"Are you finished with your homework, Gohan?" Goku called from the living room. "We're ready to leave for the mall!"

"Just a minute tousan!" He tapped the pencil against his cheek and then wrote something more.

>   
>  _I know my tousan misses Vegeta more than anything in the world. They talk to each other on the phone every night, my kaasan completely unaware, and more than once I've heard him crying. Why does he stay with us? I know about the Bond, I had Vegeta explain it to me last week, and I share something like it with Colby though he has no Saiya-jin blood. There is a constant, daily ache in my heart that I know comes from Colby's absence by my side. Both tousan and Vegeta are fully Saiya-jin, how can they stand being apart? I'm going to tell tousan later today that he can go back to Tokyo whenever he wants. There's no sense in both of us being miserable._
> 
> _I hear tousan and kaasan discussing whether or not they need to send me to a therapist when they think I'm not listening. Kaasan thinks that I spent too much time by myself moping while tousan says that nothing is wrong with me. I know that one day she'll make me discuss my feelings with a stranger, kaasan usually gets her way majority of the time._
> 
> _Videl's stopped ignoring me when we pass each other on the street or in school and she's started to talk to me again. I liked the games she used to come up with when we were younger, hopefully she'll let me play with her despite kaasan glaring at her from the living room window. She used to do that every time I jumped rope or played hopscotch with her, I bet she's afraid that I'll grow up to be gay. You know what? I never thought that kaasan was a homophobe before but I bet that she is. I wonder what'll happen when she finds out about tousan and Vegeta._

  
Gohan closed his notebook and pushed his chair back. Family time was something that his parents were trying out. Both had this theory that if they all spent more time together as a family then there wouldn't be another truly messy divorce. They weren't remarried yet but his mother was working on it.

The phone rang and Gohan picked up before the first ring had even completed. "Son residence."

"Gohan? Can I speak to your father? It's important."

Vegeta didn't sound too good and that made him worry. Did something bad happen to him? "Sure, just a minute. Tousan! Tele-" Before the word was even completed, his father had picked up the other end. Curious to what the call was about, Gohan didn't replace the receiver and instead listened in.

"I need some help. Lots and lots of help." There was a noise in the background and Vegeta exhaled.

"What's wrong, koi? Did they try to evict you again?"

"Your friend Bulma gave me a little present, that's all." A wail came over the line and both of Gohan's eyebrows rose. That almost sounded like a-

"She gave you a baby?!" Goku asked in shocked tone of voice. "Why in the world would she do something like that? I didn't even know that you knew her!"

"He was just lying by the front door of my apartment in a basket when I came home from work today. There was a baby bag sitting next to him along with a note." He cleared his throat a little nervously, not sure of the reaction. "His name is Trunks and it seems that he's my son."

There was absolute silence over the line for several seconds and Gohan thought that his father had hung up at first.

"N-n-nani? Did you say that she dropped off your son?!"

"Hai, permanently. She had a copy of the legal papers in the basket. Bulma's given me custody. You've got to help me, koi! I don't know a damn thing about taking care of a kid!"

"I'll be over as soon as I can, Vegeta. Gohan, since you've been listening the entire time-" Gohan gulped audibly, thinking that he was in trouble. "-how would you like to go see Trunks today?"

He smiled. "Can I really? Won't kaasan be mad that our "family fun time" got cancelled?"

"You just leave your kaasan to me."

Gohan hung up his extension already knowing what his father was going to say. Some unknown until recently relative is going to be deathly ill and Goku's going to take Gohan to see him or her before they kicked the bucket. Every time they went with Vegeta someplace he used that or a similar excuse. His mother had to know that something wasn't quite right but she never questioned it.

For however long it lasts, whether it's only two months or two years, Gohan will always think back to this time and remember that he, once again, had been home.


End file.
